Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant switched to emergency diesel generators Sunday after losing its last working connection to the electrical grid, Ukraine's state nuclear power company Energoatom said. It was the 16th time this year that the plant lost all external power, according to the company.
Energoatom said the 330-kilovolt Ferosplavna-1 line disconnected at 2:36 a.m. and an automatic attempt to reconnect it failed. The International Atomic Energy Agency said the cause and location of the disconnection were unknown. The plant's Russian-installed management reported normal radiation levels at the site and in its monitoring zone.
The plant's six reactors are no longer generating electricity, but equipment still needs electricity to keep nuclear fuel cool. That makes the grid connection a safety system as well as a source of power for the site. When the connection fails, diesel generators can keep cooling equipment running as long as the generators work and have fuel.
The IAEA said the plant had enough fuel to run a limited number of emergency generators for about two weeks. That estimate applies to the fuel on hand and the generators it can support. The agency had said on Oct. 23 that the plant's main Dniprovska line was already unavailable, leaving Ferosplavna-1 as the remaining connection before Sunday's outage.
A local ceasefire brokered by the IAEA in September allowed crews to restore external power after an earlier outage that began Aug. 20. Russia has controlled the plant since the early weeks of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As of Sunday morning Pacific time, no restoration of off-site power had been confirmed.
