IAEA chief says situation tense around Russia's Kursk plant, but no permanent mission planned

(Reuters) - U.N. nuclear agency chief Rafael Grossi, in an interview published early on Tuesday, said the situation remained serious around Russia's Kursk nuclear power plant, but his agency planned no permanent mission at the site.

Ukrainian troops remain in Russia's southern Kursk region after pouring over the border last month, but remain some 40 km (25 miles) from the facility.

"(The situation) is serious in that a military incursion has taken place and that incursion has reached the stage that it is not that distant from a nuclear power station," Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Russia's RIA news agency.

Grossi visited the Kursk plant, made up of four reactors, last month and said it would be "extremely exposed" if it came under attack as the facility had no containment dome.

In his comments to RIA, made in New York ahead of debates at the U.N. General Assembly, he said he hoped favourable circumstances would mean he would not have to visit the plant again.

"I hope there will be no need to return to the Kursk station as that would mean that the situation has stabilised," he said.

The IAEA, he said, had no plans to station observers permanently at the station - as it has at Ukraine's four plants, including the Zaporizhzhia station, seized by Russian forces in the early days of Moscow's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Grossi said the situation remained tense at Zaporizhzhia, where each side regularly accuses the other of planning to attack the station.

"My experts continue to report on military action near the station," he told RIA.

Grossi has visited the Zaporizhzhia station five times since the invasion and urged both sides to show restraint to guard against any nuclear accident.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Himani Sarkar)