The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog chief has postponed his scheduled visit to the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine by a day, according to a report in Russian state media Wednesday
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Rafael Grossi’s visit slated for Wednesday has been delayed to Thursday, Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the director general of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear firm, told state-run news agency TASS in the report.
“[His] mission has been put off till the next day,” Karchaa told TASS.
Following a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv Tuesday, Grossi said he was concerned about the possibility the nuclear plant could be caught up in Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia.
He had initially announced he would go to the plant on Wednesday to assess the situation.
“We are enlarging the team, so we are trying to make our process as visible, as impactful as possible to avoid a nuclear accident,” Grossi told a news briefing in Kyiv.
CNN has reached out to the IAEA to ask about Grossi’s visit to the plant
Flood impacts: The nuclear plant receives cooling water that’s critical for safety from a nearby thermal plant that is fed upstream from the reservoir adjacent to the Nova Kakhovka dam that collapsed last week.
On Sunday, the IAEA said it needed access to a location near the plant to determine water levels at the reservoir to clarify a discrepancy between measurements following the dam’s collapse.
Kyiv and Moscow have traded accusations over the dam’s destruction, without providing concrete proof that the other is culpable. The dam was occupied by Russia at the time of its collapse but is not yet clear whether it was deliberately attacked or if the breach was the result of structural failure.
