“IAEA Warns of Dangerous Situation at Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant Amid Evacuations”

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warns of a dangerous situation at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant now that evacuations have started there. Russia has called on residents of 18 towns near Zaporizhia to leave their homes over a possible counter-offensive by the Ukrainian army. This has created traffic jams and an ‘unpredictable and potentially dangerous situation’, according to the IAEA.

“While staff will remain at the plant,” there are “great concerns about the increasingly tense, stressful and challenging conditions for staff and their families,” the UN watchdog said in a statement.

On Friday, the Russian-appointed head of the region, Yevgeny Balitsky, said that “in recent days the enemy has attacked places close to the front.” As a result, he decided to “evacuate children and parents, the elderly, people with disabilities and hospital patients,” he wrote on social media.

That evacuation is going too fast, says Ivan Fedorov, the refugee Ukrainian mayor of the captured city of Melitopol via Telegram. The evacuation call has led to “frenzied panic and equally frenzied pile-ups,” he says. Because buses transport people every 20 to 30 minutes, gas stations have run out of gas, Fedorov said.

Several times before, the IAEA warned of escalations at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. Last August they were given access to the plant for inspection. Russia resisted this for a long time, but after the intervention of French President Macron, they tacked. Two IAEA experts have since resided there permanently.

Abel Bormans