THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are used to risky missions — from the radioactive aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan to the politically charged Iranian nuclear program. But their deployment amid the war in Ukraine to Zaporizhzhia takes the threat to a new level and underscores the lengths to which the organization will go in attempts to avert a potentially catastrophic nuclear disaster.
The 6-month war sparked by Russia’s invasion of its western neighbor is forcing international organizations, not just the IAEA, to deploy teams during active hostilities in their efforts to impose order around Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, pursue accountability for war crimes and identify the dead.
“This is not the first time that an IAEA team has gone into a situation of armed hostilities,” said Tariq Rauf, the organization’s former head of verification and security, noting that the IAEA sent inspectors to Iraq in 2003 and to former Soviet Republic Georgia during fighting. “But this situation in Zaporizhzhia, I think it’s the most serious situation where the IAEA has sent people in ever, so it’s unprecedented.”
The IAEA’s Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi highlighted the risks Thursday when he led a team to the sprawling plant in southern Ukraine.
“There were moments when fire was obvious — heavy machine guns, artillery, mortars at two or three times were really very concerning, I would say, for all of us,” he said of his team’s journey through an active war zone to reach the plant.
Speaking to reporters after leaving colleagues inside, he said the agency was “not moving” from the plant from now on, and vowed a “continued presence” of agency experts.
But it remains to be seen what exactly the organization can accomplish.
“The IAEA cannot force a country to implement or enforce nuclear safety and security standards,” Rauf said in a telephone interview. “They can only advise and then it is up to ... the state itself,” specifically the national nuclear regulator. In Ukraine, that is further complicated by the Russian occupation of the power station.
The IAEA is not the only international organization seeking to locate staff permanently in Ukraine amid the ongoing war.