The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that it was informed by Ukraine that “direct communications” between Chernobyl and the national regulator have been restored, in news welcomed by IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, informs MIA.
The international agency said that contact between the defunct Ukrainian nuclear power plant and the national regulator SNRIU was lost “more than a month” earlier when Russian forces controlled the site.
“This was clearly not a sustainable situation, and it is very good news that the regulator can now contact the plant directly when it needs to,” Director General Grossi said in a IAEA Tuesday update on the Ukrainian conflict.
Grossi was planning to head a mission of IAEA experts to the defunct plant later in April to check nuclear safety, security and radiological situation as well as deliver equipment and repair the Agency’s remote safeguards monitoring systems there.
Russian forces seized the plant on February 24 and held it for five weeks before withdrawing on March 31.
On March 10 Ukraine had told the IAEA on 10 March that it had lost contact with the plant and that the regulator was receiving information from it “through senior off-site management of the plant,” the agency said.
