As President Donald Trump proposes designating the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as a neutral zone under Washington’s control, International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said safety assessments will be needed for the “unprecedented” situation.
“In whichever scenario that we will have in the near future, there will have to be some status for the plant, in terms of, of course, legal ownership stays with Ukraine, but the reality is that it is controlled by Russia,” Grossi said in remarks at the the 2025 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington Tuesday. “And so how are you going to articulate it, in particular when the next challenge is the restart of the plant?”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration proposed designating the area around the power plant as a “neutral zone” under Washington’s control, which the U.S. described in a document presented in Paris to Ukrainian and European officials, outlining what it called “the outlines of a durable and lasting peace.” As of April 21, Trump is still waiting for a response from Kyiv, the Journal said.
Gross added that Russia has “of course, every intention of restarting the plant, and this is a very big machine that has been on COVID shutdown for almost three years.” Zaporizhzhia plant direct Yuri Chernichuk told Russian-owned news source Strana Rosatom, which is owned by Russian state-owned nuclear energy corporation Rosatom that has occupied Zaporizhzhia since 2022, that Russia will obtain licenses to operate, and potentially restart, all units of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine by 2027.
Grossi went on to say that, since the plant was shut down in September 2022, “there’s a lot of work in terms of safety assessment, of what can be done, what could be done and then, and not only that, that is one thing that the agency could eventually help do if we are allowed to work, but also for the sustainability of this operation.”
“If ever this is going to be restarted, there will have to be some stability, so that the plant is not subject to loss of external power,” Grossi said. “All of these things are the things that we are looking at and that we are having conversations about, with Russia and with Ukraine.”
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, Grossi emphasized, and it provides 20% of the country’s electricity still with six gigawatts of power.
Environmental groups, such as Ukraine’s nuclear power plant operator Energoatom, have maintained with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the Russian occupation of Zaporizhzhia must end and the plant must return to Ukrainian control. Energotom has also said, along with environmentalist groups, that Rosatom’s “illegal plans” to restart the reactors is a violation of nuclear and radiation standards.
“It is impossible for Rosatom to meet IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] nuclear safety guidelines in seeking to restart ZNPP,” Jan Vande Putte, a nuclear expert at environmentalist group Greenpeace Ukraine, said in a February statement. “We have called on the Director General to make this explicitly clear to Rosatom and Russian government representatives in his upcoming meetings. The IAEA must stop signaling to the Russian government that there is any legitimate pathway for their restart of reactors at Zaporizhzhia.”
Grossi spoke of ownership and potential restart activities in March, where he said IAEA would “stand ready” to support the plant whatever agreement is reached, so long as there were “developments on restraint around energy infrastructure.”
“We all wish for this devastating war to end as soon as possible,” Grossi said.
