Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been cut off from the power grid again, its Russian administrators and the Ukrainian atomic agency said on Monday, a potentially dangerous incident that has become more frequent due to shelling.
“Due to a high-tension line being cut, the plant lost its external electricity supply,” the Russian administration wrote on Telegram, adding the causes of the outage were being investigated and that back-up diesel generators were keeping it working.
Ukraine’s nuclear agency Energoatom accused Russia of carrying out an attack on Monday morning that caused the power cut, saying it was the seventh instance of the plant entering “blackout mode” since Moscow’s troops took control in March 2022. Energoatom said the generators had enough fuel reserves to last 10 days. “If it is impossible to restore external power to the plant during this time, an accident with radiation consequences for the whole world may occur,” it warned.
A purported airborne strike that occurred overnight resulted in the downing of 15 drones and four Russian missiles, according to the governor of the Dnipro area, and at least eight civilian casualties. Energoatom claimed that another wave of Russian missile attacks was to blame for the most recent power outage at Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power facility in Europe and located in southeast Ukraine.
After a few hours, the external power supply was once again operational. Before stopping power production in September, Zaporizhzhia used to provide about 20% of Ukraine’s electricity and operated throughout the first several months of Russia’s offensive despite constant shelling. Although none of the facility’s six Soviet-era reactors have produced energy since, it is nonetheless connected to the Ukrainian electrical grid for internal uses, most notably to cool the reactors. (AFP)