IAEA experts record explosions near ZNPP

On Tuesday, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi reported the explosions recently recorded by the agency's experts near the Zaporizhzhia NPP.

This is stated in a new report released on the agency's website.

IAEA reported a strong detonation on August 14 and gunfire on August 16. Another explosion near the site occurred on 17 August, five detonations were heard some distance from the ZNPP on 20 August and five more on 21 August.

The IAEA experts did not observe any explosives and confirmed that the previously reported landmines remain in the same location in between the perimeter fences. The IAEA experts are expecting access to the rooftops of reactor buildings 1, 2, 5 and 6 in the coming days.

“The height of the ZNPP cooling pond continues to drop by about 1 centimetre per day while water from the ZTPP inlet channel is regularly pumped into its discharge channel to compensate for water used for cooling or lost through natural evaporation,” reads the report.

As noted, there was no radioactivity released to the environment arising from the water leak at the steam generator in unit 4.

As a reminder, Grossi stated that the team of experts would closely monitor the process of the transition of the ZNPP unit 4 to cold shutdown and unit 6 to hot shutdown.

On August 10, ZNPP started transferring reactor unit 4 to cold shutdown following the detection of a water leak at one of its four steam generators located in the containment of unit 4.