In three sites in Ukraine that it examined at Kyiv’s request following Russian allegations that work was being done on a ‘dirty bomb,’ the UN nuclear watchdog said on Thursday that it had not discovered any evidence of unreported nuclear activity. Moscow has consistently said that Ukraine intended to deploy such a bomb, a conventional explosive device loaded with radioactive material, and claimed nuclear industry-related institutions were engaged in the plot without providing any supporting data. The charge is rejected by the Ukrainian administration.
Moscow has been accused by some Ukrainian and Western officials of fabricating the claim in order to give itself cover before detonating its own dirty bomb and blaming Kiev. Following a request from Kiev, the International Atomic Energy Agency declared last month that it will assess two locations in Ukraine. It said such inspections had started on Monday and ended on Thursday at three rather than just two places, all of which Russia had named.
According to a statement from the Vienna-based IAEA, inspectors have had access to the locations without restriction for the past few days and have been able to complete all planned tasks. The IAEA ‘could not uncover any evidence of undeclared nuclear operations and materials at the locations’ after evaluating the results that have been made public so far and the information that Ukraine submitted.
The locations were identified by the IAEA as the Production Association Pivdennyi Machine-Building Plant in Dnipro, the Eastern Mining and Processing Plant in Zhovti Kody, and the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kyiv. Additionally, environmental samples were collected by inspectors and forwarded for lab study. The IAEA will then report back on the findings.
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