Power to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine restored after brief outage

Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo said on Monday that external power has been restored to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant following a brief outage following a fire reported at the power facility in the city of Zaporizhzhia.

“Ukrenergo restored the power transmission line that supplies the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The station switched to power from the Ukrainian power system,” the company said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, a Russian-controlled power plant in southern Ukraine was cut off from external power and had to rely on emergency generators to run off nuclear fuel and prevent a disaster.

Each party blamed the other for the power outage. Local officials stationed in Russia said Ukraine had cut power lines and Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company Energoatom said the outage was caused by a Russian strike.

Confirming the outage, the head of the United Nations nuclear energy watchdog said “the nuclear safety situation at the plant is extremely vulnerable.”

“We must agree to protect (plants) now; this situation cannot continue,” said Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on Twitter.

Although six reactors were shut down at the plant, it still needs a steady supply of electricity to keep the nuclear fuel cool and prevent a possible meltdown.

Energoatom said the backup diesel generator has enough fuel for about 10 days.

“The countdown has begun,” he said in a statement posted online.

The plant, which is located in the Russian-held region of southern Ukraine near the front line along the Dnipro River, is Europe’s largest nuclear power station and the area has come under repeated attacks.

Energoatom said it was the seventh power outage at the plant since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On all previous occasions, external power had been restored after emergency generators kicked in.

Before the Russian invasion, the plant supplied about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity needs.

Ukraine’s energy ministry said nearly 250,000 consumers had lost power in the Zaporizhzhia region due to equipment damage at a substation in the latest Russian shelling, but that power had been restored to most.