“Director General Grossi will travel to Kyiv and then to Moscow later this week to continue his consultations aimed at agreeing and implementing a nuclear safety and security protection zone around the ZNPP as soon as possible,” the IAEA said.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has become the center of an ongoing nuclear safety crisis, described by Ukraine as an act of nuclear terrorism by Russia.

The plant, which is the largest of its kind in Europe, has seen destruction of its infrastructure via shelling, damage to its power lines, amounting to what Ukrainian authorities call the largest situation of its kind in history. A potential disaster may exceed the scale of previous disasters at nuclear power plants.

According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), "The situation in Ukraine is unprecedented. It is the first time a military conflict has occurred amid the facilities of a large, established nuclear power" program.

Nuclear safety expert Attila Aszódi said that an event similar in type and scale to the Chernobyl disaster is technically and physically not possible in the Zaporizhzhia plant, while calling for urgent steps to ensure the safety of the plant.

On 11 September, the last operating reactor at the plant was placed in cold shutdown, a state requiring less energy for cooling, consequently reducing the danger posed by damage to the plant's connection to the wider energy grid. However, spent fuel at the site could still represent a significant risk if storage or cooling systems are damaged by fighting. (ILKHA)