Off-site power is being restored to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, officials say

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Off-site power to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces for nearly four years, is being restored after a monthlong outage, officials said Thursday.

Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk said the damaged 750-kilovolt Dniprovska transmission line linking the Russian-occupied plant to Ukraine’s grid has been repaired, while work continues on the Ferosplavna 330-kilovolt backup line that runs through Russian-held areas.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the repairs to Europe’s largest nuclear power station were carried out under a local ceasefire. It described the return of off-site power as “a key step for nuclear safety.”

Russian and Ukrainian forces established special ceasefire zones for repairs to be safely carried out — a rare case of cooperation between both sides.

“Both sides engaged constructively with the IAEA to enable the complex repair plan to proceed,” Grossi said in a statement.

Grynchuk said Ukrainian energy workers have repaired the plant’s power lines 42 times since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. During that period, the facility lost external power and had to rely on emergency diesel generators on 10 occasions.

The Zaporizhzhia plant has been operating on diesel backup generators since Sept. 23 when its last remaining external power line was severed in attacks that Russia and Ukraine each blamed on the other.

The plant is in an area under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.

Grossi said Saturday that emergency diesel generators were designed to be the “last line of defense” to help nuclear power plants cool their reactors, but that their use was now “an all too common occurrence.”

“As long as this devastating conflict goes on, nuclear safety and security remains under severe threat. Today, we had some rare positive news to report, but we are far from being out of the woods yet,” Grossi said.