Grossi considers it “extremely serious” that there are fighting “so close” to the Kursk nuclear power plant

Follow the latest news on the war in Ukraine live

27 ()

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has warned from the Kursk nuclear power plant in southern Russia of the risk to the security of these facilities posed by the persistent fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces: “The existence of a nuclear plant of this type so close to the military front is an extremely serious fact.”

In statements to the media, Grossi warned of the “fragile” situation of this plant, which continues to operate and generate electricity, something that does not occur, for example, in the case of the Ukrainian plant in Zaporizhia. In fact, the head of the IAEA believes that the fact that it continues to operate makes the situation “even more serious.”

The fear of a new disaster like the one that occurred in Chernobyl in 1986 has hovered over the conflict since its outbreak in February 2022, but the Ukrainian military incursion into Kursk has brought the nuclear risk to Russian territory for the first time.

Grossi has confirmed from the plant that impacts from drone attacks are visible in the area, although he has not commented on possible perpetrators, reports the Bloomberg news agency. The IAEA always avoids such accusations in the interest of independent surveillance, as it has also argued in the case of the Zaporizhia plant.

According to statements made by the TASS agency, the head of the Russian corporation Rosatom, Alexei Likhachev, there is no doubt about the authorship of the attacks and “where they come from.” He stressed that local personnel had shown the international delegation evidence of the bombings.

Likhachev said that, following the visit, the IAEA “shares the concerns” already expressed by Moscow, which include, among other things, understanding that “an attack on the Kursk nuclear power plant could be a blow to the entire nuclear industry on the planet and cause irreparable damage.”

The Kursk plant shares with Chernobyl the RBMK technology, a Soviet-era design that, unlike more modern systems, lacks additional containment structures designed to contain radiation in the event of an accident.