South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Critical nuclear plant is partially knocked offline
Russia says shelling attack by Ukraine is cause of shutdown
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Saturday that the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine was disconnected to its last external power line but able to run electricity through a reserve line amid sustained shelling in the area.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi said in a statement that the agency’s experts, who arrived at Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, were told by senior Ukrainian staff that the fourth and last operational line was down. The three others were lost earlier during the conflict.
But the IAEA experts learned that the reserve line linking the facility to a nearby thermal power plant was delivering the electricity the plant generates to the external grid, the statement said. The same reserve line can also provide backup power to the plant if needed, it added.
“We already have a better understanding of the functionality of the reserve power line in connecting the facility to the grid,” Grossi said.
In addition, the plant’s management informed the IAEA that one reactor was disconnected Saturday afternoon because of grid restrictions. Another reactor is still operating and producing electricity both for cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for households, factories and others through the grid, the statement said.
The Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, has been held by Russian forces since early March, but Ukrainian staff are continuing to operate it.
The Russian-appointed city administration in Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia plant is located, blamed an alleged Ukrainian shelling attack on Saturday morning for destroying a key power line.
“The provision of electricity to the territories controlled by Ukraine has been suspended due to technical difficulties,” the municipal administration said in a post on its official Telegram channel. It wasn’t clear whether electricity from the plant was still reaching Russian-held areas.
The plant has repeatedly suffered complete disconnection from Ukraine’s power grid since last week, with the country’s nuclear energy operator Energoatom blaming mortar shelling and fires near the site.
Local Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of pounding two cities that overlook the plant across the Dnieper river with rockets, also an accusation they have made repeatedly over the past weeks.
In Zorya, a village about 12 miles from the Zaporizhzhia plant, residents on Friday could hear the sound of explosions in the area.
It’s not the shelling that scared them the most, but the risk of a radioactive leak in the plant.
“The power plant, yes, this is the scariest,” said Natalia Stokoz, a mother of three. “Because the kids and adults will be affected, and it’s scary if the nuclear power plant is blown up.”
During the first weeks of the war, authorities gave iodine tablets and masks to people living near the plant in case of radiation exposure.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to take the role of “facilitator” on the issue of the Zaporizhzhia plant in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, according to a statement from the Turkish presidency.
The Ukrainian military on Saturday reported that Russian forces overnight pressed their stalled advance in the country’s industrial east, while also trying to hold on to areas captured in Ukraine’s northeast and south, including in the Kherson region, cited as the target of Kyiv’s recent counteroffensive.
It added that Ukrainian forces repelled around six Russian attacks across the Donetsk region, including near two cities singled out as key targets of Moscow’s grinding effort to capture the rest of the province. The Donetsk region is one of two that make up Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas, alongside Luhansk, which was overrun by Russian troops in early July.
Separately, the British military confirmed in its regular update Saturday that Ukrainian forces were conducting “renewed offensive operations” in the south of Ukraine, advancing along a broad front west of the Dnieper and focusing on three axes within the Russian-occupied Kherson region.