MADRID, 19 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced on Tuesday that two other members of the Ukrainian staff at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant have been detained by Russian troops, a fact that it has described as “worrying”.
The director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, has lamented the arrest of the two workers of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and has expressed his hope that the situation will be resolved soon, as he said in a statement from the agency itself.
Also, the IAEA team on site has learned of the release of the Deputy Director General of the Zaporizhia NPP, Valeriy Martiniuk, who was arrested early last week.
Grossi welcomed the news, recalling that at the beginning of October the plant’s general director, Igor Murashov, was arrested by Russian forces, who ‘de facto’ control the plant.
In this context of arrests of plant personnel, the IAEA director general continues his consultations between Ukraine and Russia on the establishment of a protection zone in the surroundings of the nuclear power plant, describing it as “imperative” to reach an agreement on this matter , according to the letter from the agency.
However, the IAEA has announced that the nuclear power plant has reestablished the connection with the last 750 kilovolt (kV) power line that remained in operation, after it was lost for the third time in ten days.
IAEA experts present at the site have been informed by Ukrainian operational staff that the connection was restored at 9:30 p.m. (local time) on Monday, almost 18 hours after the line was disconnected by a protection system that automatically takes that action when the voltage drops too low.
“Repeated outages demonstrate how precarious the nuclear security situation remains at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant during the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine. They also underscore the need to establish a nuclear security protection zone around the facility, following the frequent bombings at or near the plant in recent months,” Grossi said.
In addition, he has detailed that although during the day on Tuesday there have been no bombings in the surroundings of the plant, the IAEA team present there has observed four landmine explosions during the day.
