IAEA Starts Power Restoration at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant After Long Outage

Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as seen from Nikopol, Ukraine, on July 21, 2023. Photo by Ercin Erturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images/File

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that restoration of power to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has begun after a four-week outage and the establishment of local cease-fire zones that allow repair work.

The plant remained without power from the grid for four weeks – the longest outage since the war began.

Work to restore damaged lines outside the Zaporizhzhia NPP site has begun after a four-week outage, in connection with the establishment of local cease-fire zones to enable the continuation of work.

Current status and context of events

According to Grossi, restoring external power is critical for nuclear safety and stability. Both sides are constructively engaging with the IAEA to ensure the implementation of the complex repair plan.

Apart from prisoner exchanges, the fighting in Ukraine has hardly diminished in the ongoing conflict.

Although a ceasefire has not been officially confirmed, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said that Ukrainian specialists were working on power lines on Saturday – this is the 42nd round of repair work since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The sole reason for unprecedented risks and the threat of a radiological incident in Europe is Russia’s military aggression, the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, and the systematic shelling of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

The Russian-controlled plant posted on Telegram that staff are carrying out restoration work, adding that the Russian Defense Ministry plays a “key role” in ensuring that the work can continue in the zone of active shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“Without security guarantees provided by the military leadership, the work of the power engineers would be impossible,” the Telegram post says.

Last month the plant lost connection to the sole remaining power line, after which it operated for more than 20 days on emergency diesel generators, according to the IAEA.

Both sides exchanged accusations over the outage. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga accused Russia of a “deliberate” outage of the plant’s power supply with the aim of testing reconnection to the Russian grid. Russia said the outage occurred due to shelling by Ukraine.

According to the IAEA, the outage at the plant, which has been under Russian control since the start of the war, has become the tenth loss of grid connection.

Russia continues to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Two weeks ago a Russian strike on a substation of the power system in Slavutych caused an outage of more than three hours at the former Chernobyl NPP.

Zelensky accused Moscow of a “deliberate strike” involving “more than 20 drones,” saying that “‘the Russians could not have known that strikes on facilities in Slavutych would have such consequences for Chernobyl.’”

Tim Lister and Gul Tuysuz of CNN also contributed to the reporting.