The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, is today travelling to Ukraine to lead the IAEA's first full-fledged assistance mission of safety, security and safeguards experts to the country. The team will arrive at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) on Tuesday to deliver equipment, conduct radiological assessments and restore safeguards monitoring systems.
In his opening remarks earlier today at the First International Conference on Nuclear Law in Vienna, when referring to nuclear safety and security, Director General Grossi said: "In the case of Ukraine, we are working within, and to a great extent thanks to, the existing framework of norms and procedures through the IAEA's Incident and Emergency Centre, including through the Agency's Response and Assistance Network (RANET), which has been operating for a long time."
"And now we can see how important, how essential it was, is, and will be to have such a system, which helps the IAEA and its Member States provide the assistance that they need on such occasions," he added.
Ukraine separately informed the IAEA today that there had been no significant new developments related to nuclear safety and security in the country over the past 24 hours, Director General Grossi said.
Regarding the country's 15 operational reactors at four nuclear power plants, Ukraine said seven are currently connected to the grid, including two at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhya NPP, two at the Rivne NPP, two at the South Ukraine NPP, and one at the Khmelnytskyy NPP. The eight other reactors are shut down for regular maintenance or held in reserve. Safety systems remain operational at the four NPPs and they also continue to have off-site power available, Ukraine said.
In relation to safeguards, the IAEA said it was still not receiving remote data transmission from its monitoring systems installed at the Chornobyl NPP, but such data was being transferred to IAEA headquarters from the other NPPs in Ukraine.
