Ukraine warns of ‘critical’ situation as Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant left without external power for a week

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, which is under Russian control, has been without external power for a week. Shelling cut it off from the grid, forcing it to rely on diesel generators, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on September 30.

“The generators and the plant were not designed for this, have never operated in this mode for long, and we already have information that one generator has failed,” Zelensky wrote. He stressed that “the situation is critical” and that “it is the Russians, through their shelling, who are preventing repairs to the power lines to the plant.”

The Russian-installed communications director for the plant, Yevgenia Yashina, told the Russian state news agency TASS that all the diesel generators supplying the facility were operating normally and that staff were “monitoring safety parameters.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also commented on the situation on September 30. The agency said that, for now, the emergency diesel generators were performing adequately and had sufficient fuel reserves, but stressed that restoring external power was urgent.

“The current status of the reactor units and spent fuel is stable as long as the emergency diesel generators are able to provide sufficient power to maintain essential safety related functions and cooling,” said Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA. “Nevertheless, it is extremely important that offsite power is restored. I strongly encourage both sides to work with us and enable these essential repairs to take place.”

The last external power line to the Zaporizhzhia plant was damaged by shelling on September 23. It was the 10th time the facility had lost external power since the start of the full-scale war, and the current outage is the longest yet.

The Zaporizhzhia plant is the largest nuclear power station in Europe. Russian forces seized it on March 4, 2022. Since September of that year, it has not produced electricity, operating only the systems needed to cool its reactors.