A deal to protect Europe’s largest nuclear power plant from a catastrophic accident due to fighting in Ukraine could be “close,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Tuesday, but warned that intensified combat in the area has increased risks to the facility.
In an interview with The Associated Press a day before he was to cross the front lines for a second time to visit the plant, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he felt it was his duty to ramp up talks aimed at safeguarding the facility.on
He met Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and said he would “most probably” head to Russia in the coming days.
“There is an increased level of combat, active combat” in the area of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Grossi said. “My teams there report daily about the attacks, the sound of heavy weaponry. This is practically constant.” Grossi has long called for a protection zone to be set up around the plant, which is very near the front line of the war. But so far, an agreement has been elusive. “It is a zone of extreme volatility. So the negotiations are, of course, affected by the ongoing military operations,” Grossi said.