UN nuclear watchdog calls Ukraine's nuclear situation 'very fragile'
Russian forces severed the electricity to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant but there is "no immediate risk" of a radiation leak, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi told ABC News in an interview Wednesday at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna.
There is active fuel at the site of the original reactors that melted down in 1986 but, for the time being, at least, there is enough capacity to cool spent nuclear fuel.
"There is no immediate risk in the dimensions that were imagined and there is work in progress to restore the electrical capacity," Mariano Grossi said. Still, he conceded, "It's a situation that is very fragile."
The lack of reliable electricity also impedes monitoring abilities, leaving the IAEA -- the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations -- occasionally blind to any spontaneous increase in radiation.
"We do have communications and then we lose. Then we recover it. It's not good in terms of following the safety, the security," Mariano Grossi said. "I'm concerned. I’m worried."
There are no IAEA inspectors on the ground while the fighting rages. The director-general said he would not send them in unless he can go first.
"I will not put my staff in harm’s way before me going first," Mariano Grossi said.
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Russia is in control of Chernobyl and a second nuclear power station in Zaporizhia. For a time, neither plant had a way to exchange workers or upgrade staffing.
In Zaporizhia, Mariano Grossi said, a shift change is now happening. In Chernobyl, workers are not allowed off-site.
"We all need a break and especially people who are manning extremely sophisticated equipment. The stress is very high," he said.
Mariano Grossi is traveling Thursday to Turkey, where the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers will meet face-to-face for the first time since the two-week-old invasion began. He said he will ask each side to commit to "fundamentals," including respecting the physical security of each of Ukraine’s four nuclear power stations, plus Chernobyl.
"We haven't seen something as critical and worrying as a fire breaking out in a building adjacent to a nuclear reactor," Mariano Grossi said. "What really worries me is that unlike Fukushima (in Japan), where you had mother nature to blame, now it would be us."
-ABC News' Aaron Katersky and Robert Zepeda