(Reuters) – Russia said on Thursday that it was ready to continue work on creating a safety zone around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, after the head of state nuclear firm Rosatom met with U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi in Moscow.
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was seized by Russian forces shortly after they invaded Ukraine last year and has come under repeated shelling, with both Moscow and Kyiv trading blame and accusing each other of risking a nuclear accident.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called for a safety zone to be created around the plant, to prevent heavy weapons and shelling from causing further damage.
“Rafael Grossi spoke about promoting his initiative to establish a nuclear and physical nuclear safety protection zone at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” Rosatom said.
“In this regard, (Rosatom CEO) Alexey Likhachev expressed the readiness of the Russian side to continue work on the implementation of the IAEA Director General’s initiative,” it said.
The plant, which is Europe’s largest, accounted for around 20% of Ukraine’s national power generation before the invasion, but has not produced any electricity since September when the last of its six reactors was put offline.
After it was seized by Russian troops, Rosatom took control of it and installed its own management, a move that Kyiv has denounced as illegal.
(Reporting by Caleb Davis,; Editing by Gareth Jones)
