U.N.: Nuke plant needs buffer

Playing with fire, agency chief says in call for safe zone

Mariia Ruban, 92, sits on a chair as she talks about the moments of the explosion next to her house that damaged its roof and windows after a Russian attack in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022. Ruban says she was pushed off her bed by the force of the blast and lost her conscious. "There was nobody around, nobody could help me", she completes. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Mariia Ruban, 92, sits on a chair as she talks about the moments of the explosion next to her house that damaged its roof and windows after a Russian attack in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022. Ruban says she was pushed off her bed by the force of the blast and lost her conscious. "There was nobody around, nobody could help me", she completes. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

KYIV, Ukraine -- The United Nations atomic watchdog agency urged Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday to establish a "nuclear safety and security protection zone" around the Zaporizhzhia power plant amid mounting fears that the fighting could trigger a catastrophe in a country still scarred by the Chernobyl disaster.

In a report, nuclear inspectors who had to wend their way through the battlefield to get to the plant said they were "gravely concerned" about conditions there.

"We are playing with fire, and something very, very catastrophic could take place," Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday in an address to the Security Council.

At the Security Council meeting, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres likewise demanded that Russian and Ukrainian forces commit to halting all military activity around the plant and agree on a "demilitarized perimeter."

Guterres said this would include "a commitment by Russian forces to withdraw all military personnel and equipment from that perimeter and a commitment by Ukrainian forces not to move into it."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country needs to look at the specifics of the protection-zone proposal and could support the measure if it envisions the demilitarization of the plant.

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy praised the International Atomic Energy Agency report's "clear references" to the presence of Russian troops and military equipment at the plant. He urged the agency to explicitly back Kyiv's long-held position that Russian forces need to withdraw from the facility and its surroundings.

Shelling continued around the plant Tuesday, a day after it was again knocked off Ukraine's electrical grid and put in the precarious position of relying on its own power to run its safety systems.


Normally, the plant relies on power from the outside to run the critical cooling systems that keep its reactors and its spent fuel from overheating. A loss of those systems could lead to a meltdown or other release of radiation.

Russia and Ukraine accused each other of shelling Enerhodar, the city where the plant is situated. The Ukrainians also charged that the Kremlin's forces fired on a town across the Dnieper River from the power station.

Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov reported a powerful blast in the city around midday. The explosion left the city of 53,000 cut off from its power and water supplies. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the blast.

WHO IS TO BLAME?

In its report, the International Atomic Energy Agency did not assign blame for the shelling at the plant.

Even before the report was issued, some Ukrainian officials were faulting the inspectors for appearing unwilling to blame Russia for the shelling. On Tuesday, a Russian-installed local official in Zaporizhzhia offered a mirror version of the same criticism.

Inspectors did note that on several occasions, the plant lost, fully or in part, its off-site power supply because of military activity in the area. The U.N. agency said a backup power supply line should be reestablished and asked that "all military activities that may affect the power supply systems end."

"It is very sad the IAEA lacked the courage to call a spade a spade, and to state clearly where the power plant and its environs were bombarded from," said Vladimir Rogov, an official in the Russian army's occupation administration. "What is being stated today is sad, almost pessimistic."

In addition, the agency warned that the more than 1,000 Ukrainians operating the plant under Russian military occupation are"under constant high stress and pressure, especially with the limited staff available" -- a situation that could "lead to increased human error with implications for nuclear safety."

On Tuesday, the inspectors reported having found Russian military equipment parked inside buildings, as well as damage to buildings housing fresh nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.

Plant operators, they said, were being denied access to some parts of the facility, including the cooling ponds. Even the on-site emergency center has been compromised, and is now being used by Russian military personnel, the inspectors said.

Two inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency mission remained at the plant, a decision welcomed by Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.

"There is a number of our workers there, who need some kind of protection, people from the international community standing by their side and telling [Russian troops]: 'Don't touch these people, let them work,'" Podolyak said.

Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told Ukrainian television: "Any repairs are impossible at this point -- there are ongoing hostilities around the plant."

In the meantime, the plant's only remaining operational reactor will "generate the power the plant needs for its safety and other functions," the International Atomic Energy Agency said.


Repairs to some of the damaged electrical equipment will "require a long time as the spare parts were tailor-made," the report said, and the war has interrupted supply chains.

Under normal circumstances, comprehensive nuclear safety missions typically take the agency several weeks to complete," said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Zaporizhzhia plant has diesel emergency backup generators to produce power to run the place if the outside source is disrupted.

Experts say the reactors at Zaporizhzhia are designed to withstand natural disasters and even plane crashes, but the unpredictable fighting has repeatedly threatened the cooling systems.

Ukrainian intelligence reported that residents of Enerhodar were fleeing the city out of fear. On Tuesday, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said Ukraine had proposed a humanitarian corridor, where both sides would cease artillery strikes, to ease escape from the area, but that Russia had refused.

Meanwhile, gunfire and explosions were heard Tuesday in the Russian-occupied city of Berdyansk in southastern Ukraine, with Russia's state-run media reporting that the car of the Kremlin-installed "city commandant" had been blown up. The RIA Novosti news agency said that the official, Artem Bardin, was in serious condition and that a shootout followed the assassination attempt.

The agency quoted Russian-backed local officials as saying they had launched a manhunt for the "Ukrainian saboteurs" responsible.

Information for this article was contributed by Hanna Arhirova, Frank Jordans and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press, Eric Nagourney and Matthew Mpoke Bigg of The New York Times and by Claire Parker and John Hudson of The Washington Post.

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