The IAEA said on Wednesday that it had not had access to the rooms of several reactors at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that have been hit by repeated power outages.
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Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “still do not have access to all parts of the site” in southern Ukraine, the UN agency said in a statement.
“For the last two weeks, they have been denied access to the reactor rooms of units 1, 2 and 6” of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, which has been in Russian hands since March 2022 following the invasion of the country.
“This is the first time” that they have not been allowed “access to the reactor casing of a shutdown unit, which contains “the reactor core and spent fuel,” the IAEA said.
“In addition, access to certain parts of the turbine rooms remains restricted,” the authority added, which is also still waiting for “access to the reactor roofs”.
The Zaporizhia power plant has been attacked by fires and cut off from power eight times, a precarious situation that has raised fears of a nuclear accident.
Both camps accuse each other of wanting to cause a catastrophe there and the IAEA has a permanent team of experts on site.
She further explained that an emergency power line “is automatically capable of supplying electricity without manual and therefore late intervention, provided it remains operational” as work is carried out.
“This is an important development as it helps ensure the independence of the site’s power system, even as off-site power overall remains extremely fragile,” she said.