IAEA Chief says Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant's cooling tower may need to be demolished
The cooling tower of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant will probably have to be demolished due to damage caused by last month's fire, IAEA head Raphael Grossi said after a visit there. Last month, a fire engulfed the cooling tower at the Russian-occupied station, Europe's largest nuclear power plant.
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International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi visited Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant for the fifth time. His focus was on the significant damage caused by a fire at one of its cooling towers in early August, he also visited a water pumping station and a storage facility for fresh fuel rods.
The visit took place two years after DG Grossi stablished a permanent IAEA presence at Zaporizhzhya NPP to prevent a nuclear accident.
Speaking from the inside of the cooling tower that was recently damaged by a fire, he said, “I am inside it, as you can see, where we can still see what remains of the structure that once was and which was consumed by the fire. Until today, we hadn't been able to get to this point, high up in the tower so we can assess in a much better way. The damage that occurred. This big structure is not usable in the future, so it will probably be demolished at some point in the future. So our work continues, and this has been one of the most important aspects of my visit to the station today.”
At a press encounter, Grossi told reporters, “I believe that we continue making progress in ensuring the safety, the security and the stability of the Plant.”
He also reiterated, “We were able to determine at least that this fire was not caused by combustion at the base of the queen tower. We were able to determine and quite clearly.”
Grossi added, “To make an assessment or find an assessment of the origin of this fire requires precisely seeing, assessing, personally making a number of technical evaluations.”
The Director General reiterated, “It's important that the IAEA remains with this crosses. It remains useful. It remains operative. And it's not dragged down into political discussion. But by offering the hard data we are providing, we believe, enough elements so analysts like you and others can draw appropriate conclusions.”
On Tuesday (03 Sep), the Director General also met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, ahead of his visit to Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.
At a press encounter after the meeting, he said, “We discussed something which I believe is important because he or the government had a request for us, which is that the IAEA should be looking also at the substations and the critical substations in the country that have been subject to pressure or attacks in the sense that they are also linked to the nuclear power plants. We think this is relevant and we are going to be making an evaluation, of the situation in some of these substations, these nodes where from which the energy is distributed as of next week.”