An artillery bombardment targeting a facility near the nuclear reactors at Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia plant led to a wreck on its roof, this was indicated by satellite pictures, reigniting catastrophic radiation concerns.
The most recent raid on the facility occurred just as a delegation from the UN’s nuclear watchdog was en route to the site on Monday as Russia and Ukraine exchanged allegations over bombarding the facilities.
The devastation at Europe’s largest nuclear power station in Enerhodar, Ukraine, was spotted in new high-resolution satellite footage collected by the American company Maxar Technologies.
Images showed the building’s roof being destroyed near a number of nuclear reactors at the Zaporizhzhia plant. They also displayed blazes near the facility’s main entrance.
The facility containing reactor fuel was allegedly struck by Ukrainian forces, according to the region’s newly Russian–established administration.
Read Also: Fresh Shelling At Ukraine Power Plant Despite Radiation Risk
Meanwhile, the radiation levels at the nuclear plant were normal, and the situation there had been under control, according to authorities stationed in Russia, according to RIA Novosti.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) delegation landed in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, on Monday after departing Austria.
‘It is expected that the mission will start work at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the coming days,’ Oleg Nikolenko, a ministry spokesman, posted on Facebook.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin in Moscow, stated that Russia will secure the security of the IAEA mission and urged other nations to follow suit and to ‘raise pressure on the Ukrainian side to force it to stop threatening the European continent by shelling the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and surrounding areas’.
Six months after Russia initiated an attack on Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia, which was seized by Russian forces in March but now controlled by Ukrainian personnel, has become a flashpoint in a battle that has degenerated into an attrition battle waged primarily in the country’s east and south.
‘We must protect the safety and security of Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear facility,’ Rafael Grossi, the director-general of IAEA, tweeted
Grossi said without mentioning a specific date that an IAEA team he is supervising will visit the facility on the Dnieper river close to the fighting lines in southern Ukraine, later this week.
Meanwhile, the IAEA stated that the mission would inspect any substantial damage, check the work environment for plant employees, and ‘determine functionality of safety & security systems.’
He further said that he will ‘perform urgent safeguard activities’, a reference to keeping track of nuclear material.
’Without an exaggeration, this mission will be the hardest in the history of IAEA,’ Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba noted.
To prevent it from becoming a target, the United Nations and Ukraine have demanded the removal of heavy weaponry and people from the nuclear facility.
Days have passed while the two sides spat allegations regarding how the other was encouraging tragedy with their assaults.
Authorities in Zaporizhzhia are distributing iodine pills and instructing locals on how to use them in case of a radiation leak as concerns about a nuclear accident grow in a nation still troubled by the 1986 Chornobyl disaster.