Zaporozhye NPP chief urges world not to treat attacks on nuclear sites as norm

TASS

MELITOPOL, September 17. /TASS/. The international community should not grow accustomed to the fact that the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), located on the line of combat contact, is being subjected to Ukrainian attacks, ZNPP Director Yury Chernichuk said.

"If two or three years ago any incident [at the ZNPP] was perceived as a red-color breaking news by every wire service in the world, today, in my view, it is being treated as a routine occurrence. The fact that it is very bad and extremely negative, and that people should not get used to it, is, in my opinion, indisputable," Chernichuk has told TASS.

He added that the NPP’s staff and other residents of its satellite city of Energodar continue to face Ukrainian attacks on a daily basis.

Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev told International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi during their meeting on September 14 that by continuously attacking the facility, Kiev plans to create unbearable conditions for the personnel and put the station in a critical situation. He said that over the past few months, around 100 people were wounded and nine people, including the plant’s nine workers and civilians, were killed in Ukrainian attacks.

The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant is a Russian nuclear facility located on the shore of the Kakhovka Reservoir in Energodar. ZNPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, comprising six power units with a total capacity of 6 GW.

Currently, all of the nuclear facility units are in "cold shutdown" mode and are not generating electricity. Since 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces have been attacking both residential areas of Energodar and the plant grounds, firing artillery weapons on it and launching drones. Since September 2022, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission experts have been permanently present at the plant. The teams of IAEA staff stationed at the plant are regularly rotated.

Fonte: TASS