Russia announces new rotation at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

March 11, 2023

- Rotation scheduled for early April, says deputy head of nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom

By Elena Teslova in Moscow

MOSCOW (AA) - Russia on Friday announced a new rotation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) staff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (NPP).

According to Renat Karchaa, deputy head of Rosenergoatom, a management company for all nuclear power plants in Russia, the members of the current monitoring mission, stationed at the NPP, will be replaced in early April.

"The IAEA staff usually stay at the station for a month. This is a standard mission period, then rotation. Now it is scheduled for the beginning of April, if Kyiv doesn't break it," Karchaa told Russia's state news agency TASS.

According to the official, currently, three IAEA inspectors -- from South Africa, South Korea and France -- are working at the Zaporizhzhia power plant.

In February, the Russian Foreign Ministry voiced concern over three failed attempts for rotation at the NPP, claiming the UN moved forward additional conditions that fall out of its domain, including demands to clear mines in some areas and to use a route where Russia could not guarantee the safety of the convoy.

The ministry said if the fourth rotation had not taken place, it would have considered it a "deliberate obstruction of the work of the mission."

The ministry presented to the UN a diplomatic protest, after which, on March 2, the rotation was carried out.

Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest and one of the world’s 10 biggest nuclear power plants, has been under Russian control since March last year, soon after the start of the Ukraine war.

Fears of a nuclear catastrophe persist amid reports of shelling around the area.