Recent staff cuts at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) are raising concerns among international nuclear watchdogs.

Ahead of his visit to the plant on February 7, International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi told the Associated Press that he will focus on the impact of personnel reductions, especially while Russia has denied access to employees of Ukraine’s nuclear operator, Energoatom.

Russia has begun construction of protected covering at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, according to a December 17 report from Russian news outlet RT. The story has been picked up in the West by some news agencies but has not been widely circulated.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, said, “Russia is constructing a protective dome over spent radioactive fuel stores at the [Zaporizhzhia] nuclear power plant as Ukrainian forces continue to target the facility.”

The events of the past 12 days are unprecedented and nerve-wracking for the nuclear community. Never before has a nuclear power plant been in a full-scale war zone until the Russian invasion of Ukraine started on February 24. The world watched nervously as Russian troops and heavy equipment rolled through the Chernobyl site and then a week later attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Russian forces are now less than 50 kilometers from the South Ukraine nuclear power plant.