A dam collapses downriver
from the separation
nuclear plant, sparking fears
you can imagine about nuclear safety.
The UN's nuclear watchdog
says there's no immediate risk
and says they have enough water.
For months
you're sitting there in your mouth,
roughly the position of it.
But the head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency
has been quoted
by Russian state media saying
they won't be able to keep
pumping cooling water
from a reservoir to the plant
if the water level drops too low.
Well, to explain all this,
the IAEA director General Rafael
Mariano Grossi,
joins me now live from Vienna.
Mr. Grossi.
Great to have you on the show.
Thank you very much
for taking the time to speak to us.
Bring us up to date,
if you could, on the situation.
As you understand
right now
at the Zachary, your nuclear power plant.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, as always, a
pleasure to talk to you.
What I can say,
we are monitoring this by the minute,
I should say,
since this occurred yesterday,
the levels of the of the water are,
of course,
going down, decreasing quite,
quite rapidly.
Obviously, the dam down
south being destroyed
The effects of water is unimpeded.
And this is, of course,
having an automatic impact
on the amount of water
that the nuclear power plant has
to be integrated into the cooling system
of the plant.
I don't want to get too technical here,
but just to explain
that there is a reservoir there
and then a number of internal channels
that ensure that there is water
in circulation permanently, so to speak,
so that the reactors that you are,
you know, showing them there
to get the necessary cooling.
Of course,
if if the plant were to run out of water,
then we would have
a very serious situation.
What we said when I said is that there
doesn't seem to be an imminent
risk of a dry up of the water
available available there.
But the situation is serious
in Seoul insofar
as we are seeing this diminishing.
It's between five and seven centimeters
per hour.
So it's it's it's steady li going down.
So we have to monitor it
very, very carefully.
This is why I am going
back to the Parisian next week.
I've been there already.
Twice, and I'm going to return there
with a reinforced team of nuclear
safety experts from the from the IAEA
to two to have a more complete,
more comprehensive assessment
of where we are.
So no imminent risk.
But do you have a sense
of how much water
you would have into in some months,
how many months
you have water in that
well before that cooling control?
I wouldn't like to speculate too much
because this is a function of the
the conditions of the water and how
we get to a point where the
the the the movement of the water.
The fact of water stabilized
is, relatively speaking.
I would say we calculate that
more or less a month is is guaranteed.
It could be a little bit more,
but it would also be less.
So it all depends.
You were mentioning
you were quoted as saying
that there is also a function
of the capacity
to pump water from the river,
so to speak.
But there are certain levels
you can you must
you must imagine
that there is a difference
in the level of the of the reservoir
and the
the cooling pond and the river itself.
So you need to pump it up.
And then if the level goes down too much,
you cannot do that.
So all of these things are
in combination.
This is why we say
there is no reason for immediate panic
or to believe that
that the water to cool
the plant is going to dry up immediately.
But it's a serious situation.
We are taking this very seriously.
So no immediate.
But Ukraine says it will take a think.
They said five years Mr.
Grossi to rebuild the dam.
So I'm guessing you're
looking now at plan B here.
Well, absolutely.
There are a
number of mitigation or mitigating.
If you want measures that can be taken,
including using water from from
other places,
not necessarily the river
digging for for water in the water table
near the plant, getting water from
from neighboring towns or villages.
But all of this needs to be assessed.
Of course,
the decision will be taken at the plant
But we as IAEA being present
there are going, of course,
to express very clearly
what we feel should be should be done
Obviously, the situation and we we
am aware
of of the assessment
by the Ukrainian government.
It is going to take a long time
to go back to those to the situation
before the accident.
But we were estimating this possibility.
We were assessing this possibility
as one.
We were wishing that it would not occur.
But unfortunately,
this has to be the case.
You call it an accident that Kiev accuses
Russia of blowing up this dam,
sabotaging its own van dam.
What are your thoughts on this?
Well, there's there's no
if you sort of read too much into me
using the word accident.
It is, of course,
an event.
It is a distraction.
I you know, I am the head of an agency
that is an agency,
among many other things
we do of inspectors. We inspect.
We are known as the nuclear watchdog,
as you know.
So we don't speculate
when we pass judgment on something is
on the basis of information
that we can assess.
And as you can imagine,
I don't have information
to tell you
what we believe is at the origin of this.
And there are a number of speculations
that are out there on who is behind it.
What I'm dealing
it is with their results,
and I'm trying to prevent this
from getting into a nuclear accident.
Let's talk then about inside the plant,
because as you would have seen Mr.
Grossi from our correspondent
and her son,
Fred Pleitgen,
you've seen hundreds of people
being evacuated in the area.
What has this
meant for the staff at the Zapper
which power plant?
Are there enough
qualified people there
to run the nuclear plant safely?
Well, yeah, this is a good point.
You know, this this this plant, it's
actually six reactors
used to have around 12,000
people working there.
At the moment, we are below 3000.
And of course, one has to bear in mind
that the plant at the moment
is not operating normally.
It's not generating power.
So it is at a very low level,
at a low regime.
So in this very low level operation,
we call it in the jargon, it shut down.
You need far
less people that you would need
if the plant was operated,
operating as in peacetime,
which is not the case now.
But it's a matter that worries us.
And I
have been discussing this in Moscow
and in Kiev, because quite clearly
a situation like this is not sustainable
for too long.
That will be
there will be a moment
where a decision will have to be taken
as to
whether the plant
will be restarted or not.
And then there might be a problem
in terms of staff.
This is only a quantitative analysis
I am making. And I'm here.
I'm conscious of the fact
that I'm not talking about something
that worries me a lot also,
which is that will affect the situation,
the pressure.
You have to remember that this plant
is at the frontline,
right at the frontline,
not in the province,
not in the vicinity of the frontline.
Whenever I go there, I have to,
you know,
go through the front line and through a
no man's land.
And with soldiers
confronting each other,
seeing each other,
this is where the action is.
So you can imagine working in both
those conditions.
And you were mentioning that
a few days ago,
some people were invited to evacuate
a village near the plant.
So the situation
has nothing normal about it.
It is very abnormal.
And the levels of stress
and anxiety are enormous.
We are trying to help
in that regard as well.
I can't imagine the stress
that they are all feeling across the.
Appreciate you taking the time
to speak to us this evening.
Thank you, sir.