The United Nations’s nuclear watchdog said Wednesday that it sees “no critical impact on safety” at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, hours after its safeguards monitoring system was taken offline by Russian forces.
In a tweet Wednesday morning, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency maintained that the loss of electricity at Chernobyl “violates [a] key safety pillar on ensuring uninterrupted power supply” but said, “In this case IAEA sees no critical impact on safety.”
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The news comes two weeks after Russian forces seized control of the Chernobyl facility.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said earlier that the group was investigating the status of safeguards monitoring systems in other locations across Ukraine, which is home to 15 nuclear reactors — the second-largest number in Europe.
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Safeguards monitoring systems verify that nuclear facilities are not misused and nuclear material is not diverted from peaceful uses, according to the IAEA. The watchdog group is looking into the status of safeguards monitoring systems in other locations in Ukraine and will provide an update soon, Grossi said.
