For the families living near Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, the arrival of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts this week means something deeply personal: a trained professional will be on-site to help prevent a catastrophe that could upend their lives. The IAEA has dispatched teams to all four of Ukraine’s nuclear power reactors, a move that comes as communities across the country continue to grapple with the human toll of Russia’s ongoing war.
Among those directly affected are the residents of Dnipro, where a weekend Russian missile strike on an apartment building killed 45 civilians. And in the Kyiv region, a helicopter crash on Wednesday at a kindergarten claimed the lives of the country’s interior minister and about a dozen other people.
Against this backdrop of daily tragedy, the IAEA’s expanded presence offers a measure of protection against the risk of a nuclear accident.
IAEA expands presence to all Ukrainian nuclear sites
The IAEA, a United Nations agency, already had a permanent team at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant—Europe’s largest, which is currently seized by Russian soldiers. Now, according to agency chief Rafael Grossi, the IAEA has deployed at least 11 employees across all nuclear plants in Ukraine, a level of presence never seen before. IAEA personnel will also be stationed at Chernobyl, the now-defunct nuclear facility where a fatal accident in 1986 caused fallout to cover a large portion of Europe.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Grossi on Wednesday at the government’s headquarters in Kyiv, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that starting the following day, “there will be two flags at all of the nuclear facilities in Ukraine; one of Ukraine and the second of the international nuclear agency.”
Safety experts to stay as long as needed
Grossi traveled to Chernobyl on Wednesday and to Rivne on Tuesday as part of his IAEA staff installation and flag-raising mission in Ukraine this week. According to him, personnel will remain at the sites “as long as they are requested” by the Ukrainian government.
He emphasized that the IAEA flags flying in Ukraine are “not only symbolic.” “They represent and they will signify the presence of some of the most well-known professionals in safety and security who will offer guidance and technical help to each site, confronting specific challenges and issues as needed,” Grossi said. The IAEA chief also noted that negotiations with Russia and Ukraine are progressing to establish a much-needed protection zone around the plants, though he acknowledged it is not happening as quickly as he would like.
“We are getting closer to a positive result,” he remarked.
What to watch next
As the IAEA teams settle into their posts, the next key development to watch will be the progress of Grossi’s negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine over the creation of a safety zone around the nuclear facilities. Grossi stated at the press conference that the IAEA and the Ukrainian government remain in discussion over the zone’s establishment, and he hopes to finalize the agreement soon. The continued presence of IAEA experts at every plant will be critical in the weeks ahead, as the war grinds on and the risk of a nuclear incident remains a pressing concern for millions of Ukrainians.
