Ukrainian nuclear power plant without external power for over a week

What the report says

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine has been without off-site electricity for more than a week, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, raising renewed concern about the safety of Europe’s largest nuclear station. The plant is occupied by Russian forces and has not produced electricity since 2022, but its reactors still require cooling and backup power to avoid a serious accident.

Al Jazeera reported that the facility is now depending on emergency diesel generators and has only about 10 days of fuel on site. The IAEA said the plant had not received fuel from an off-site storage facility for roughly six months, though deliveries arrived from another location on Thursday and Friday. The agency is seeking a local ceasefire so repairs can be made to damaged electrical lines.

The outage is the 27th time the plant has lost external power since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian deputy head of military law enforcement Gyunduz Mamedov, as cited by the broadcaster. The IAEA has maintained a permanent presence at Zaporizhzhia since 2022, and both Kyiv and Moscow regularly accuse each other of endangering the site.

The report also noted recent drone incidents near the plant, including an event that injured two employees this week. In general, nuclear safety experts say sustained loss of external power at a reactor site is a serious risk because cooling systems must keep functioning even when reactors are offline.