On January 11, 2024, Oleh Korikov, SNRIU Acting Chairman and Chief State Inspector for Nuclear and Radiation Safety of Ukraine, held an online meeting with representatives of nuclear regulators from leading countries of the world. During the meeting, international partners were informed about the current state of nuclear and radiation safety in our country.
The main topic was the situation in the Zaporizhzhya NPP occupied by russian troops. Oleh Korikov recalled that the occupation of Europe's largest nuclear power plant has already lasted more than 22 months and stressed that this has led to significant degradation of nuclear and radiation safety at the nuclear power plant.
“The situation with regular maintenance and repairment becomes worse from day to day. There is no systematic approach and no scheduled activities of preventive maintenance for safety systems and safety-related equipment. Even the general schedule for maintenance and repairment for the 2024 year was not developed”, said Oleh Korikov.
He also stressed the importance of providing the occupiers with full and timely access to experts of the IAEA permanent monitoring mission to ZNPP SSCs and key site areas, equipment of safety systems, and safety-related equipment and called on international partners to support Ukraine in this principled position.
Oleh Korikov said that legal ZNPP operator, NNEGC Energoatom developed the Conception of conducting inspections and restoring the level of safety of nuclear installations at the ZNPP site and activities there, which have to be implemented after de-occupation.
In addition, he noted that on behalf of SNRIU, SSTC NRS (Regulatory TSO), together with the nuclear regulators of Norway and Finland (DSA and STUK), began the development of a Program for Restoring State Safety Regulation for the Operation of Nuclear Facilities at the Zaporizhzhia NPP Affected by the Hostilities and Occupation by the russian federation troops. According to him, in the process of developing this program, it is important to analyze and take into account the available international experience from other sites under unusual conditions.
Nataliia Rybalka, Director of the Radiation Safety and Radioactive Waste Management Department - Deputy Chief State Inspector on Nuclear and Radiation Safety of Ukraine, emphasized the importance of resuming activities and regulatory control over those enterprises that were under occupation and whose activities are related to the treatment of spent nuclear fuel, ionizing radiation sources, and radioactive waste. In this context, she informed about the situation on the Lipetsk base of the National Scientific Center “Institute of Metrology”, which suffered significant damage as a result of the russian occupation.
The meeting was attended online by representatives of the European Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG), Western European Association of Nuclear Regulators (WENRA), US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US NRC), UK Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland (STUK), National Atomic Energy Agency of Poland (PAA), State Nuclear Safety Inspectorate (VASETI), The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM), The Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA).