Europe's largest nuclear energy plant, Zaporizhzhia, is perhaps probably the most harmful place on this planet proper now. The plant is in Russian-occupied Ukraine and has been shelled repeatedly since March.
The scenario is rigorously monitored by the Worldwide Atomic Power Company, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog company tasked with ensuring nuclear services are secure and atomic materials is barely used for peaceable functions. Its director basic, Rafael Mariano Grossi, just lately inspected the positioning.
"Properly, it is an unprecedented factor, actually, in so some ways," Grossi informed Lesley Stahl for this week's 60 Minutes. "This place is on the entrance line which makes the entire thing so risky and in want of an pressing motion."
Earlier than the struggle the plant equipped 20% of Ukraine's energy. It is now largely idle, however the reactors nonetheless have to be continually cooled down with circulating water. In the event that they over-heat it may result in nuclear disaster inside hours.
"The entire system is being cooled by electrical energy that is coming in from the city, and there is shelling," Stahl stated to Grossi. "So what would occur if that electrical energy went down?"
"What you may have in that-- in that scenario is emergency methods that kick in. Like, diesel turbines you can have on a personal property," Grossi stated. "And you don't need the largest nuclear energy plant in Europe, one of many largest on this planet, to be cooled with-- mainly an emergency system which relies on gas. As a result of when your diesels are out of no matter you place in it to make them work, then what occurs? Then you may have a meltdown. Then you may have an enormous radiological nuclear emergency or an accident, and that is what we are attempting to stop."
"So this case is completely precarious," Stahl stated.
"Completely," Grossi responded. "Till we now have this plant protected, the opportunity of the nuclear disaster is there."
That doable disaster may dwarf Chernobyl, a much smaller Ukrainian plant that famously blew up 36 years in the past. In late August, after months of negotiating with either side, Director Common Grossi led his company's first mission into an energetic warzone to examine the soundness of the Zaporizhzhia web site.
"And as we have been approaching the final Ukrainian checkpoint, we began listening to taking pictures, fairly heavy taking pictures. Very shut, very near us. So at that time, even the individuals on the checkpoint have been working for shelter," Grossi stated. "I feel it was a transparent try and cease us. To say, 'Go house. This isn't your home.'"
However they proceeded. There have been troopers, tanks and armored vans in every single place. The Russians are literally utilizing the nuclear plant as their navy base.
"Once you went to go to, to examine," Stahl requested Grossi, "you possibly can go wherever?"
"Sure, you understand, we're the IAEA," Grossi stated. "We're generally known as the nuclear watchdog."
"Properly, there are reviews that you simply weren't allowed into some disaster room there into the management room," Stahl stated. "Is that not true?"
"Properly, there have been areas that-- the place we have been restricted," Grossi stated. "However all of the issues we would have liked to see we may see."
"You did not wish to see the management room?" Stahl requested.
"Yeah, we did wish to see it," Grossi stated. "However for us, what's vital is to be trying on the important nuclear operation of the plant. And this we may see."
That included proof that rockets had come dangerously near the reactors and different delicate areas. On a satellite tv for pc photograph, Grossi additionally identified the switchyard the place the electrical energy is available in from the city.
"So that is the place the exterior energy comes to chill the reactors down," Grossi stated. "And this place was shelled a number of occasions, a number of occasions, which tells you that folks knew precisely what they have been doing."
"They have been making an attempt to chop off the facility supply," Stahl stated.
"Precisely," Grossi replied.
Shelling additionally destroyed one of many plant's workplace buildings. And the employees who stayed behind to take care of the plant are below duress. A plant spokesman who fled Ukraine after working 4 months below Russian occupation stated he felt like a hostage. There have been reviews of imprisonments, kidnappings and torture of Ukrainian staff. The pinnacle of the plant was detained.
"Once you're working at a nuclear energy plant and also you're below stress, and also you're nervous, and you feel threatened," Stahl requested Grossi, "does not that result in the opportunity of human error?"
"In fact. Sure," Grossi stated. "And the shelling goes on. And because of this we now have been making an attempt, I've been pushing, for the institution of a safety zone. Which is mainly, 'do not assault the plant.'"
He took his safety zone proposal to each President Zelensky in Kyiv and President Putin, in a one-on-one assembly final month in St. Petersburg.
"Would you say that [Putin] is accustomed to what is going on on," Stahl requested, "at this nuclear plant?"
Completely," Grossi stated. "He is aware of each element of it, which was stunning to me."
"In my dialog with him, I may see that he had a really detailed information, not solely of the structure of the-- of the plant, but in addition, and really importantly, of the electrical entry, the exterior energy supply," Grossi stated. "It's a facility that he knows-- that he is aware of very effectively."
"Is Mr. Putin making an attempt to make use of this plant as a weapon?" Stahl requested. "Somebody stated to us the opposite day, 'You realize, that is his soiled bomb, this plant.'"
"Yeah, however for those who shield it there is no soiled bomb," Grossi stated.