KYIV. UkraineGate . 5 . JANUARY . 2023 | war News .
Petro Kotin, President of Energoatom NAEC, questioned the calls of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to establish a buffer zone around the Zaporizhzhia NPP. He believes that it is more likely that Ukraine will seize the station by force, since efforts to establish a suitable zone are suspended .
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“We do not consider this (the establishment of a safety zone around the ZNPP, – ed.) to be realistic. It is a new year, and there is no creation of this zone,” Kotin said in an interview with the publication, noting that, in his opinion, the more likely scenario is the return of the power plant to the control of Ukraine by the military.
He added: “We are counting on the Ukrainian armed forces. If Kyiv’s forces manage to break through the Russian lines and capture the southern city of Melitopol, which is more than 100 kilometers south of the facility, the only option for the occupiers will be to leave the plant.”
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Kotin also emphasized that the nuclear threat posed by the Kremlin by occupying the power plant should also be remembered by countries that still conduct nuclear business with the Russian Federation. He noted that this is “one of the pillars on which this war stands” and called to stop this flow of money, which Moscow “gets from financing the war.”
In particular, the president of “Energoatom” said that the sanctions against the Russian state nuclear giant “Rosatom” should continue until the war in Ukraine ends. Currently, Rosatom’s subsidiaries still supply more than a fifth of the enriched uranium used in the United States, and they continue to work on projects from Bangladesh to Egypt and Turkey.
“Their international activities should be suspended until they stop the illegal seizure of civilian objects,” Kotin noted.
The Ukrainian government’s efforts to persuade other countries to sever ties with the Russian nuclear industry have received support from Holtec International Corp., a close American nuclear energy supplier that works with the Kyiv government. The company’s CEO, Chris Singh, said in a letter sent to Bloomberg that Russia’s occupation of the nuclear power plant not only threatens a nuclear accident, but also threatens to undermine nuclear power as a clean energy source around the world.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin has developed and normalized a monstrous new weapon of war that a would-be rogue state like his own could not use against a neighbor it dislikes. The construction of new clean energy nuclear power plants that significantly depends on the future of the decarbonization of our planet’s environment, will be in jeopardy,” Singh wrote.
Source: Ukrgate
