The Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine has lost its external electricity supply and is again using backup generators for reactor cooling, the plant’s management and the UN’s nuclear watchdog said on Sunday.
Zaporizhzhia, which produces no electricity but needs power supplied by two external links to keep nuclear fuel cool, lost its off-site electricity supply after the Ferosplavna power line disconnected, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
“The cause and location of the latest disconnection are not yet known,” the IAEA said in an X post, adding that the plant currently has sufficient fuel reserves to operate a limited number of emergency diesel generators for about two weeks.
The IAEA said on Oct. 23 that the main Dniprovska power line remained unavailable.
In early September, a local ceasefire brokered by the IAEA took effect to allow repairs to restore external power to Zaporizhzhia, which at that time had been without it since Aug. 20.
Russia seized the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest with six reactors, in the first weeks of the war that began with Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbor.
Moscow and Kyiv have since regularly accused each other of military action that compromises nuclear safety.
The plant’s Russian-installed management said the Ferosplavna line had been shut down by “automatic protection,” adding that radiation levels on the site and in the surveillance zone were normal.
“Staff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are monitoring all operational parameters of the equipment. All necessary measures to maintain the safe condition of the power units are being taken in full,” the plant’s management said in a statement posted on the MAX messenger app.
Meanwhile, a Russian overnight attack on energy facilities in Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region left more than 600,000 people without electricity, Ukrainian power company DTEK said on Sunday.
“Important energy facilities in the region were damaged in an overnight attack,” the company said on Telegram.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had hit energy infrastructure used by the Ukrainian military, as well as a container ship delivering weapons and military equipment to Ukraine south-west of the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
Russia had hit a power substation in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region, which supplied electricity to Ukraine’s defense industry, the ministry said on Sunday.
One person was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Kursk region, regional governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Sunday.
The drone hit a tractor that was in operation in the village of Pervomayskoe, killing a 40-year-old man, he said.