IAEA: Rafael Grossi to Visit Kursk NPP
Fighting between Ukrainian forces and the Russian army continues a few kilometers from the reactors
Next week, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, will travel to Russia for urgent talks with the leadership of the Russian state agency Rosatom. Further plans include a visit to Kursk NPP, near which fierce battles between the Ukrainian and Russian armies have been going on since August 6.
Grossi told Britain’s Financial Times newspaper that during the trip “we will talk to managers and technicians at the Russian power plant and check whether there have been attacks,” then “assess the state of external power supply and access to the power plant.”
According to some sources in Kiev, one of the goals of the Ukrainian invasion into the Russian territory of Kursk will be the occupation of the nuclear power plant, which at this stage will become an important “bargaining chip” of the Zelensky regime during hypothetical negotiations with Russia.
Meanwhile, the Japan Atomic Industry Forum, a Japanese non-profit organization, announced that “total global nuclear power generation capacity has reached a new historic record, thanks primarily to Russia and new nuclear power plants that have come online in China.” In June 2024, there were 436 nuclear reactors operating worldwide with a total capacity of about 416 gigawatts. This is a new record after the 414-gigawatts record set in 2018. In the first half of the year, China, the USA, South Korea, and India each commissioned one new nuclear reactor, while Russia decommissioned a single one-gigawatt nuclear reactor. China and Russia together have about 60% of the roughly 70 reactors built over the past decade, a period in which China has built 39 new nuclear reactors, quadrupling the power generation capacity of the civilian nuclear sector. As the Japanese researchers recalled, “China’s 56th nuclear reactor became operational in May 2024 at the Fangchenggang Hongsha Nuclear Power Plant in Guangxi Autonomous Region.” China currently ranks second in the world, along with France, in the number of operating nuclear reactors after the USA.
