Nuclear Experts: Demilitarized Zone at Zaporizhzhia Plant Needed to Avoid Chernobyl-Level Crisis

The International Atomic Energy Agency is calling for a safety and security protection zone to be immediately set up around the facility in order to avoid a nuclear disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. This week it released a long-awaited report urging Russia and Ukraine to create a demilitarized zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, after visiting it last week. “Their warnings are pretty clear: Unless the fighting stops, unless the shelling around and on the plant site stops, … then the plant is really skating on thin ice,” says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. We also go to Kyiv to speak with Olexi Pasyuk, deputy director of Ukrainian environmental group Ecoaction, who says the IAEA report will have limited impact on the fighting but helps raise awareness of the risks. “This is what Ukraine wanted to hear … that the only way to have it safe is to demilitarize the area,” says Pasyuk.

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