Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, visited at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Thursday after the destruction of a dam in southern Ukraine that compromised a key source of water used to cool the plant’s reactors.
Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear energy company, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that Mr. Grossi and a team from the I.A.E.A., the United Nations’ nuclear agency, had arrived at the Russian-occupied plant. Russian state news media also reported that Mr. Grossi had reached the plant, which lies near the front line and inside territory controlled by Russian forces.
Mr. Grossi was expected to give a statement to the press after his visit. The AFP news agency quoted him as saying at the plant that “the situation is serious,” but noting that “at the same time, there are measures that are being taken to stabilize the situation.”
Mr. Grossi said before his visit that he would cross the front line to investigate conditions at the plant and spend several hours touring the facility. His trip was delayed slightly because of safety concerns.
The facility, like other nuclear power plants, is designed to be resilient but has come under fire numerous times during the war. The most recent concerns arose last week when the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River caused water to drain from a reservoir that feeds a giant pond at the nuclear facility. Water from that pond is used to cool the power plant’s reactors to avoid a meltdown, so part of Mr. Grossi’s visit, he said, was to assess the water levels in the pond and how quickly the supply to it could be restored.
AFP quoted Mr. Grossi as saying he was able to see the plant’s cooling pond. “There is sufficient water,” Mr. Grossi said, according to the news agency.
Estimates vary for how long existing water supplies in the pond could last, but Mr. Grossi said on Tuesday that there “could be water for a few weeks or maybe a month or two.”
An additional concern is the precise depth of the water remaining in the reservoir. Mr. Grossi said that there was a discrepancy between water level readings taken at a thermal power plant near the reactors and measurements taken in the reservoir itself. Knowing the water depth matters for calculations about how best to resupply the cooling pond.
Oleh Korikov, Ukraine’s chief nuclear inspector, said that the effects of the dam disaster on the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, were “significant.” He told reporters during a briefing on Wednesday that the power plant could still be operated safely for now, but he expressed concerns about the Russian forces occupying the site, who have subjected the plant’s Ukrainian engineers to difficult working conditions, stress and other abuses.
Stabilizing the situation “would be possible if we had a responsible management there, but unfortunately we don’t,” he said.
