IAEA team seeks access to new dam at Zaporizhzhia plant

In his latest - 311th - update on the situation in Ukraine, Grossi said the agency's experts at the plant had been given details about the location of the dam and its purpose, which is to isolate one of the plant's channels - which supplies service water for cooling several systems including the main unit transformers - from the cooling pond.

The operators of the plant, which has been under Russian military control since early March 2022, have told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that "the dam will maintain the water level in the channel at about 14 metres, which is about 2 metres above the threshold at which the water pumps would no longer be able to operate".

The plant continues to use groundwater wells on site to provide cooling water for its safety systems to cool the reactor cores and used fuel pools. The cooling water is required even though all six units are in cold shutdown. The previous long-term water supply for the plant was based on the Kakhovka dam, which was destroyed in June 2023.

The IAEA team at the site have requested "access to the newly constructed dam but have not yet been permitted due to security concerns".

Grossi said: "Our access to this dam is essential to assess the cooling water situation which is crucial given the fragile nuclear safety situation at the ZNPP."

The update says that the IAEA team at the Zaporizhzhia plant "heard military activities on most days over the past week", and report maintenance work on safety systems and the site’s electrical systems, including the backup power transformers. The plant has been relying on a single external power line for four months.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located on the frontline of Russian and Ukrainian forces. The IAEA experts have been stationed there since September 2022 as part of efforts to boost nuclear safety and security. There are also IAEA teams at Ukraine’s Khmelnytsky, Rivne and South Ukraine nuclear power plants, and Chernobyl. The IAEA says its experts at South Ukraine and Chernobyl heard air raid sirens on most days in the past week.