Ukraine Seeks Safe Zone as Russia Nears Biggest Atomic Plant

(Bloomberg) -- The head of Ukraine's nuclear-power utility called on international monitors to intervene to ensure the safety of the country's 15 atomic reactors as an advancing Russian invasion nears Europe's largest nuclear plant.

The International Atomic Energy Agency will convene an emergency session on Wednesday in Vienna to assess the situation. The watchdog has been warning for days that the war threatens to trigger a wider tragedy by damaging nuclear power infrastructure.

“I continue to follow developments in Ukraine very closely and with grave concern, especially the conflict's potential impact on the safety and security of the country's nuclear facilities,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said late Monday in a statement. “It is extremely important that the nuclear power plants are not put at risk in any way. An accident involving the nuclear facilities in Ukraine could have severe consequences for public health and the environment.”

The chief of Ukraine's Energoatom utility, Petro Kotin, asked Grossi earlier in the day to erect a 30-kilometer (18.6-mile) safe zone around the country's four nuclear power plants. Russian columns of military equipment, artillery, and rocket launchers are regularly moving in the immediate vicinity of the plants, Energoatom said in a statement.

All of Ukraine's plants continue to “stably and safely” generate electricity, the utility said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that site perimeters have been put under increased guard.

Russian forces are close to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant -- Europe's largest with six reactors -- but have not breached the entrance, according to the IAEA statement. Of greater immediate concern is the absence of replacement personnel to operate the reactors, according to the agency, which reported a shift supervisor at one site hasn't been relieved since Feb. 24.

On Sunday, the agency reported that two Ukrainian facilities containing nuclear waste suffered damage after missiles hit a radioactive waste-disposal site in Kyiv, and an electrical transformer was damaged in a similar depot in Kharkiv.

There are Bigger Atomic Worries Than Chernobyl in Ukraine

Ukraine is Europe's second-biggest generator of nuclear power after France. Energoatom, the utility which runs its reactors, has continued to operate its four plants housing 15 reactors even as Russia's military incursion unfolded. Atomic energy generates about half the country's power.

Russia also seized the area around the shuttered Chernobyl nuclear power plant during its advance into Ukraine.