Russia burns occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant’s last-resort generators as everyday power, Ukraine says
Off-site power has been gone since 20 August, and the plant has cut its running generators to two to stretch the fuel that is left.
On 6 September, Ukraine's state nuclear operator Energoatom revealed that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant had lost its last remaining off-site power line, the 330-kV Ferosplavna-1 line, on 20 August. Prior to this, the IAEA had warned that the plant's diesel reserves were dwindling, with the potential to lose all power within days if external power was not restored or fuel deliveries continued.
The Zaporizhzhia plant has been under Russian control since March 2022, and has been relying on external or backup power for cooling and essential safety systems since it stopped generating electricity in September 2022. The plant's last off-site power line, Ferosplavna-1, went down for the 27th time since 2022 on 20 August, and Ukrainian technicians began repairs on 5 September under a local ceasefire brokered by the IAEA.
However, the line remained dead, and the plant's Russian-installed management claimed that the power would not be restored, blaming Ukrainian inaction for the other line still repaired and unconnected. Energoatom warned that weeks of continuous running of the emergency generators raised the risk of several backups failing together and that constant starts under load made the systems that start them more likely to fail.
Ukraine's crews had previously restored power to over 900,000 homes last week, as Russia continues to strike the grid before winter.
Written by urgent.news from Euromaidan Press's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
