IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi examined a cooling tower at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) this week to assess the damage it suffered in a major fire last month, the latest incident underlining persistent nuclear safety and security dangers at the site during the military conflict.
The visit to one of the ZNPP's two cooling towers took place during the Director General's fifth mission to the sprawling industrial site in southern Ukraine, and two years after he first crossed the frontline to establish a continued presence of IAEA staff at the plant and help prevent a nuclear accident there.
Inside the cooling tower, he saw significant damage on the interior walls, debris and blackened surfaces after ascending about 15 metres up into the massive concrete structure located more than one kilometre away from the six reactors, which are all in cold shutdown and do not currently need the cooling towers to remove residual heat.
While the fire that erupted in the evening of 11 August - belching thick black smoke - did not endanger nuclear safety, it underlined the constant risks the ZNPP is continuing to face in the third year of the armed conflict, with shelling, artillery strikes, drone attacks and other military activities regularly heard in the vicinity of the site.
"It is clear that the cooling tower was damaged by the fire, and it may need to be demolished," Director General Grossi said. "We will continue to closely look into this matter to try to establish what happened and what the consequences will be. Today was an important step in this work as we were able to see for ourselves the full extent of the damage."
"Coming a few months after the site was struck by a series of drone attacks, it is yet another incident showing the paramount importance of the IAEA presence at the site for as long as this devastating war goes on. The IAEA will continue to play its indispensable role in helping to avert the threat of a nuclear accident," he said.
During Wednesday's mission, he also saw first-hand how the plant is continuing to manage the aftermath of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in June last year. In visiting a pumping station of one of the six reactor units, he was able to assess the availability of cooling water in the ZNPP cooling pond, which has now dropped by just over 2 metres since mid-2023. While the water that provides cooling to the six shutdown reactors and other essential nuclear safety services is provided by the 11 groundwater wells, the cooling pond would be a primary water resource in case the wells became unavailable.
In addition, Director General Grossi toured a storage facility located in one of the ZNPP's special buildings, containing fresh nuclear fuel.
As a key part of his visit, Director General Grossi accompanied a new team of IAEA staff to the site to replace colleagues who had been monitoring the situation at the plant for the past several weeks. It is the 23rd IAEA team at the ZNPP since September 2022.
Before the Director General arrived at the ZNPP, Europe's largest NPP, he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, agreeing to expand the IAEA's assistance to Ukraine by assessing vital energy infrastructure that has increasingly been targeted in missile attacks, with potentially severe implications for nuclear safety and security.
Further underlining the high risks at the ZNPP, the IAEA team stationed at the plant reported that its only remaining 330 kilovolt (kV) backup power line was disconnected on Monday evening, leaving it reliant on a single 750 kV line. Before, the war it had four 750 kV and six 330 kV power lines available. The line was reconnected today, after nearly three days.
Shortly after the disconnection occurred, the IAEA team observed dark smoke in an area close to where the power line was reportedly disconnected, about 3 kilometres away, but it was not immediately clear if these events were linked. The ZNPP said it believed the power line cut was caused by military activities.
The team has continued to conduct walkdowns across the site over the past week, for example visiting the 750 kV open switchyard where they observed ongoing maintenance work, as well as the water sprinkler ponds which receive water from 11 groundwater wells dug after the Kakhovka dam was destroyed. The team confirmed that there is sufficient water available to cool the ZNPP's shutdown reactors.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the IAEA teams stationed at the Rivne and South Ukraine NPPs and the Chornobyl site reported that these sites have not yet restored connection to all of their off-site power lines following the widespread military activities on 26 August, targeting electrical substations that are important for nuclear safety. The teams also reported air raid alarms on most days over the past week.
At the Khmelnytskyy NPP, the IAEA team heard drones and gunfire in the early hours of Wednesday morning and were told to shelter. The KNPP and the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) reported to the IAEA that drones had flown a few kilometres away from the plant. The team at this site rotated on Wednesday.
The IAEA signed an agreement this week with France and Ukraine's Energoatom regarding support to Ukraine's NPPs. Ukraine will receive the necessary spare parts for emergency diesel generators at the South Ukraine NPP. In case of a loss of off-site power, the NPPs rely on such equipment to provide power for continued safe and secure operation. Their maintenance and functionality, including the availability of spare parts, is essential to ensure proper functioning and prevent a nuclear accident due to loss of off-site power. Such assistance was also delivered to Ukraine in 2023.
