Diesel generators cooling nuke reactors
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was relying on emergency diesel generators to run its safety systems Thursday after external power from the Ukrainian electric grid was again cut off, Ukrainian and U.N. officials reported.
Fighting in Ukraine repeatedly has damaged power lines and electrical substations that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant requires to operate inhouse safety systems, forcing workers to turn to backup generators to cool its six reactors until regular power is restored. All six reactors have been shut down. The generators have enough fuel to maintain the plant in southeastern Ukraine for just 15 days, state nuclear power company Energoatom said.
“The countdown has begun,”
Energoatom said, noting it had limited possibilities to “maintain the ZNPP in a safe mode.”
The U. N.’ s International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed the switch to backup diesel generators and said that underlines “the extremely precarious nuclear safety and security situation at the facility.”
Rafael Grossi, leader of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said relying on diesel generators “is clearly not a sustainable way to operate a major nuclear facility” and urged again that a protection zone be established around the plant.
Russia and Ukraine have traded blame during the war for shelling at and around the plant. Energoatom said Thursday that Russian shelling knocked out the last two high-voltage transmission lines feeding the Zaporizhzhia plant. Russia gave a different account, blaming Ukraine.
The Russian state-run news agency Tass quoted an official at Russia’s nuclear power operator, Rosenergoatom, as claiming that Ukraine had switched off the two power lines and denied that Russian shelling of power lines had caused the problems. He said the move deprived the city of Energodar, where plant’s workers live, of heating.
Russian forces have occupied the plant since early in the war. It is in the Zaporizhzhia region, one of four regions Russia has annexed illegally. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree transferring the
nuclear plant to Russian ownership, Ukrainian workers continue to run the station.
Energoatom said Russian officials are trying to connect the power station to Russia’s power grid so it could supply electricity to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and Ukraine’s Donbas region, another area Putin annexed.
The human toll from earlier battles became evident again Thursday when Ukrainian officials said 868 bodies of civilians, including 24 children, were found in liberated areas of the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions. National police official Oleksii Serhieiev also told reporters 34 torture sites were found after Russian troops retreated from those areas, as well as the Kyiv, Sumy and Chernihiv regions.
Elsewhere on the battlefront, Russia used drones, missiles and heavy artillery to hit several Ukrainian cities, leaving six ci
vilians dead and 16 wounded, according to the president’s office. Russian attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih left several districts without electricity or water.
Farther east in the Donetsk region, battles continued for the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, where authorities said the population was under constant shelling and living without electricity or heat.
Six cities and villages in the region came under attack in the last day, while in the northeast, three Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s second- largest city, Kharkiv, officials said.
Across the Dnieper River from the power plant, the city of Nikopol was shelled again, damaging residential buildings, a gas station and several businesses, Zelenskyy’s office said Thursday.
With Russian and Ukrainian forces apparently girding to bat
tle for the city of Kherson, signs of Kremlin rule are disappearing from the city’s streets while the remaining residents, unsure what to believe and afraid of what comes next, are stocking up on food and fuel to survive combat.
Russian soldiers, patrols and checkpoints have become extremely scarce in the city center, according to residents, and most civilians have left. The Russian tricolor flag, raised over government offices after Moscow’s forces captured Kherson in February, was missing Thursday from the main regional administrative building and other sites.
Kremlin-appointed administrators have relocated to a site 50 miles away — after looting anything of value they could take, residents and Ukrainian officials said.
But Russian troops have not decamped from the area. Ukrainian military intelligence says Russia has deployed some 40,000 soldiers to the western bank of the Dnieper River to stop the Ukrainian military from re claiming Kherson.
On the humanitarian front, seven ships carrying 290,000 tons of agricultural products sailed from Ukrainian seaports for Asia and Europe, a day after Russia agreed to resume its participation in a program allowing the export of Ukrainian grain.
Putin said Moscow had received assurances that Ukraine wouldn’t use the humanitarian corridors to attack Russian forces.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko denied that Kyiv hadmade any new commitments.