The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced yesterday that it was informed by the Ukrainian authorities that artillery shells damaged a nuclear research facility in Ukraine's besieged second largest city, Kharkiv, but without "radiological consequences".
According to this international institution, part of the Vienna-based United Nations system, Ukrainian authorities said the attack took place on Sunday, adding that no increase in the level of radioactivity at the facility was found. According to the same sources, part of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, which produces radiological material for medical and industrial use, was affected.
However, "the stock of radioactive material at the facility is very low," the IAEA added, assuring that "the reported damage () had no radiological consequences." "We have been informed of several incidents that have compromised the safety of Ukrainian nuclear facilities," the agency's director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said."
In recent days Kharkiv has been subjected to intensive artillery and rocket bombardment as Russian forces increase pressure on Ukraine to capitulate. The Russian military has held the nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhya (southeast) since Friday, where Russian artillery strikes, according to the Ukrainians, caused a fire. Moscow denies the Ukrainian version of events and says that its forces did not cause the fire. Only two of the six reactors at the plant, the largest in Ukraine and Europe, are operational.
The IAEA director general said Friday he is prepared to go to Chernobyl, which suffered one of the worst nuclear accidents in history in 1986. The site of the damaged nuclear plant was occupied by the Russian military on the first day of the invasion, February 24.
Source: KYPE
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