Moscow Considers Talks with Washington Over Control of Ukrainian Nuclear Site

Russia is ready to discuss USA's presence at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), the head of Rosatom (Russia's Federal Agency for Atomic Power) Alexey Likhachev said, Interfax reports.

"If a political decision is made by the country's leadership, we are ready to discuss this with the American side," he said.

Earlier, it was reported that the US wanted to assign a neutral status to the Zaporizhzhia NPP and the surrounding area in order to take it under its control. Washington has not yet decided which territories around the plant could be considered neutral or how control over the facility would be exercised.

On March 28, Likhachev stated that control over the Zaporizhzhia NPP would not be transferred to the US. He called such proposals "science fiction."

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The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeastern Ukraine is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and among the 10 largest in the world. It has been under Russian control since 2022. It was built by the Soviet Union near the city of Enerhodar, on the southern shore of the Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dnieper river. From 1996 to 2022, it was operated by Energoatom, which operates Ukraine's other three nuclear power stations. The plant has six VVER-1000 pressurized light water nuclear reactors (PWR), each fueled with ²³⁵U (LEU) and generating 950 MW_e, for a total power output of 5,700 MW_e. The first five were successively brought online between 1985 and 1989, and the sixth was added in 1995. In 2020, the plant generated nearly half of the country's electricity derived from nuclear power, and more than a fifth of total electricity generated in Ukraine. The Zaporizhzhia thermal power station is nearby.