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The Agence France-Presse has corrected its earlier cable, which included a statement by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Raphael Grossi, about the state of radiation levels at Chernobyl.
In particular, the original text wanted Grossi to say that the level of radiation at the plant was "under anomalous", but the new text wants the IAEA chief to say exactly the opposite, that the level of radiation at the plant is "normal". According to Agence France-Presse, the uproar was caused by a mistranslation of Grossi's statements, who used the phrase "at normal" rather than the word "abnormal" to describe the situation at the plant.
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Otherwise, Grossi, who visited Chernobyl exactly 36 years after the worst nuclear accident in history in 1986, said that "the situation was completely abnormal and very, very dangerous" during the Russian occupation from February 24 to the end of March.
The head of the UN agency was accompanied to the site by a team of experts "to deliver necessary equipment (dosimeters, protective suits, etc.)" to carry out "radiological and other checks".
IAEA experts must "repair the remote monitoring systems, which stopped transmitting data to the IAEA headquarters" in Vienna (Austria) shortly after the war began, he said.
The Chernobyl site, 150 km north of Kiev on the border with Belarus, fell into Russian hands on February 24, the first day of their invasion. Subsequently, there was a power cut at the plant and in the communication networks.
Russian troops withdrew from there on 31 March. Since then, the situation has gradually returned to normal, according to daily IAEA reports compiled on the basis of information from the Ukrainian nuclear regulator.
Raphael Grossi had visited Ukraine in late March to lay the groundwork for a technical assistance agreement. He had visited the Yuzhno-Ukrainsk station in the south of the country before meeting with senior Russian officials in Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast.
Ukraine has 15 reactors at four operating plants, in addition to waste storage sites such as the one at the Chernobyl plant. The largest plant is the one at Energodar, near the town of Zaporizhzhya, which was hit twice in March by Russian missile fire, according to the Ukrainians.
An explosion occurred at a Chernobyl reactor in 1986, contaminating a good part of Europe but mostly Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. The area, called the exclusion zone, within a 30 km radius around the plant is still highly contaminated and permanent habitation is banned in it.
"Russia's illegal and unjustified attack on Ukraine is again endangering nuclear safety on our continent," European diplomacy chief Josep Borel and Energy Commissioner Countrywoman Simpson warned in a joint statement.
The two European officials accused Russian forces of "recklessly destroying the facilities" of nuclear power plants they attacked.
"The illegal occupation and disruption of normal operations, notably by preventing the cyclical rotation of personnel, endanger the safe and secure operation of nuclear power plants in Ukraine and significantly increase the risk of an accident," they added.
"On the occasion of the anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, we reiterate our deepest concern regarding the risks to nuclear safety and security caused by recent actions at the Chernobyl site," they insisted."
Source: Proto Thema
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