UN warned of severe nuclear accident if fighting in Zaporizhia is not stopped

UN warned of severe nuclear accident if fighting in Zaporizhia is not stopped

The southern Ukraine plant, the largest in Europe, is close to the front lines, and Ukrainian authorities said today that a 72-year-old woman was killed and three others wounded when Russian forces fired more than 30 shells at Nikopol, a town controlled by Ukraine and neighboring the plant.

“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is becoming more and more unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” he said. the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, in a statement released last night before the Russian attacks on Nikopol became known.

“We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment,” said Grossi, who visited the plant twice during the war, last March and in September 2022.

Evacuation of civilians in Zaporizhia

The warning was prompted by an announcement last Friday by the Russian-installed governor of the province of Zaporizhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, that he had ordered the evacuation of civilians from 18 settlements in the area, including the town of Enerhodarwhich is located next to the power station.

The affected settlements are 50 to 70 kilometers from the Ukraine-Russia battle front line, and Balitsky said Ukraine had intensified attacks in the area in recent days.

The region is seen as one of Ukraine’s likely targets in a counteroffensive that for weeks the Ukrainian Army, which has just received sophisticated weapons from the United States and other Western allies, has been anticipating.

The General Staff of Ukraine said today that the evacuation of Enerhodar had already started.

In a Facebook post, the General Staff said that the first evacuated residents were those who adopted Russian citizenship following Moscow’s capture of the city early in the war, the DPA news agency reported.

The evacuees were taken to the Russian-occupied Azov Sea coast some 200 kilometers to the southeast, the General Staff added.

The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concern about the safety of the Zaporizhia plant.which has been on the front line since Russian forces seized it early last year, in the first weeks of the invasion of the neighboring country.

Grossi said operating staff at the nuclear power plant, whose six reactors are currently shut down, had not been evacuated until Saturday, but most live in Enerhodar and the situation has contributed to “increasingly tense, stressful and challenging for staff and their families.

He added that IAEA experts at the nuclear site “continue to hear shelling on a regular basis.”

Source: Ambito

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