's International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to visit the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant next week after it was temporarily knocked offline and more shelling was reported in the area overnight, Ukrainian officials said Friday.Fire damage to a transmission line at Europe's largest nuclear plant caused a blackout across the region on Thursday and heightened fears of a catastrophe in a country still haunted by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow to the claims. The atomic agency's head, Rafael Mariano Grossi, also said Thursday he hopes to send a team to the plant within days. Negotiations over how the team would access the plant are complicated but advancing, he said on France-24 television. A power line also has been cut, leaving up to 1,000 local residents without electricity, he added. Nikopol has been under nearly constant Russian shelling since July 12, with eight people killed, 850 buildings damaged and over half the population of 100,000 fleeing the city.
It was not immediately clear whether the damaged line carried outgoing electricity or incoming power, needed for the reactors' vital cooling systems. A loss of cooling could cause a nuclear meltdown.
The who and the what now?