Russians will not have enough water in coolers to launch ZNPP - Energy Minister

He said this on the air of the United News telethon, Ukrinform reports, citing the press service of the Ministry of Energy.

"Even if we imagine that the Russians will gather specialists in Russia and bring them to the plant, it will be unlicensed personnel. Their launch of the plant is absurd. It is impossible neither in the context of Ukrainian legislation nor even Russian and, of course, international law," the minister said.

According to him, only Ukrainian specialists have a licence to operate the plant, and the terrorists are currently preventing them from entering ZNPP.

Halushchenko also stressed a number of significant technical problems at the occupied facility, including the expiration of nuclear fuel and the lack of sufficient water for reactor operation.

While the current volume of water in the coolers is enough to keep six units offline, it will not be enough to restart ZNPP.

As reported, for the first time since the end of 2022, all six reactors at Zaporizhzhia NPP have been put into cold shutdown mode. The fourth unit of the plant was put into this mode on the morning of 13 April.

ZNPP has been under occupation since 4 March 2022. During this time, the Russians have repeatedly violated the principles of nuclear and radiation safety by mining the plant's territory, preventing qualified personnel from working and interrupting the power supply lines from the Ukrainian power grid.

Since September 2022, the IAEA mission has been permanently present at the plant, but the Russians do not allow the agency's experts full access to all areas of the plant.