Jan Vande Putte: Stopping Russian restart of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactors can be achieved

by Jan Vande Putte, nuclear and radiation expert at Greenpeace Belgium

Source: Ukrainska Pravda

The visit of Rafael Manuel Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to Kyiv in the beginning of the summer was a painful demonstration of how much the nuclear agency supports Moscow’s political interests in its illegal occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and its plans for restarting reactors at the site.

The facts have already been widely reported in the media last week, but a quick recap can reveal the underlying structure. 

27th of May Greenpeace Ukraine published satellite images of the active construction of an electricity line between Melitopol and Mariupol. It is an illegal activity by Russia on temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine as part of a larger plan to connect the ZNPP to Russia. In response Rafael Grossi said in Kyiv that he disagreed with Greenpeace and that the agency did not observe any activity at the plant showing an imminent restart. It sounded like a magician: “please look at my hand, there is nothing up my sleeve”, while the other hand makes the electricity line 150 km further disappear to his public. 

But no-one had claimed that the restart will take place very soon or that preparations for it are underway at the station. Restarting ZNPP is a long process, and the construction of power lines is only one of the signals – and the Russians continue to install new electric pylons.

Since January last year, Greenpeace’s remote sensing team have been keeping a close watch on satellite images to see the first signs of the construction of a water pumping station at the power plant, which is one of the key requirements for a reactor restart

But then comes the development of the story. After visiting Kyiv, , Grossi came to Kaliningrad to meet with Alexei Likhachev, the head of the criminal Russian nuclear enterprise Rosatom. And as a surprise, his Russian host mentioned that Russia had already started the construction of the pumping station, thereby not only contradicting Grossi’s claims of a few days earlier, but also humiliating him. It was not a slip of the tongue, becauseRussian diplomats officially informed the IAEA Secretariat in Vienna about the start of construction of the pumping station.

Perhaps Grossi can kindly beg Likhachev if his IAEA team of three men who are based at the plant, could visit the western part of the turbine halls? So far, Russia has refused them access for no clear reason. We can just guess that the preparations for the large pumping station are taking place there out of sight of the satellites in one of these huge halls. 

So why would Likhachev humiliate Grossi so openly? This is a clear example of Russia showing who is in charge. If Russia does not want the IAEA team to travel to the plant through Ukrainian territory, they bomb the team as they did in December last year, and force them to travel through Moscow next time instead. These are stepping stones for Russia in its desperate attempt to secure its false narrative and recognition that the plant is “Russian”, that the occupied territory is “Russia” and create another “fait accompli”. 

Russia’s interest in restarting ZNPP is not to generate electricity. Restarting ZNPP is political symbolism for Russia. The restart of even one of the six reactors at partial power and with a weak link to Russia would in the eyes of the Kremlin be another stepping stone in recognition that this area is now part of Russia. Furthermore, one operating reactor inside Ukraine would be a huge radiological risk, which Russia could and will use to blackmail Ukraine and the EU.

The Russian state has sufficiently proven that it does not care about nuclear safety and can basically do anything they want. Still it wants and needs the IAEA to give the restart a semblance of legitimacy.

Behind this is a clear Russian strategy to attack the international legal order and impose Russian rule. We see Russia instrumentalising the IAEA for its imperialist territorial expansion in Europe. The painful reality is that Rafael Grossi is failing to stand up to Russia’s agenda and certainly not pushing back. Perhaps he really does believe that his diplomatic approach of never calling out years of Russian nuclear safety and security violations will prevent a nuclear disaster. He is wrong. But it also conveniently does not conflict with his ambition to be the next Secretary-General of the United Nations next year which requires support from Moscow. But more fundamentally, because the IAEA has been supporting Russia’s export of nuclear technology in the world for decades, with more than 80% of all exported nuclear reactor projects in the world today coming from Russia. And half of the world’s uranium conversion and enrichment is controlled by Russia.

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