Efforts to restore power at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, following a four-week outage, began on Saturday under a local ceasefire, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Repair work on power lines near the plant has started, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi announced on social media platform X. The repairs are expected to take around a week, the IAEA confirmed in a later statement.
Initial work began on two cables of a power line that disconnected on 7 May, the agency detailed. Additional repairs are planned for another section, offline since 23 September, which caused the complete loss of external power to the facility. These repair sites are several kilometres away from the plant.
Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, has been under Russian control since March 2022. On 23 September, the facility experienced its tenth disconnection from the electrical grid, marking the longest total power outage since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.
Currently, its systems are running on backup diesel generators while repairs to power lines continue on both sides of the frontline, the IAEA said. Despite the outages, the agency assured that safety is being maintained, with cooling systems for the reactors working effectively and radiation levels remaining normal.
Located near the city of Enerhodar on the banks of the Dnipro River, Zaporizhzhia’s six reactors previously generated around a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before the war. All six reactors have been shut down following Russia’s seizure of the site.
The plant requires electricity to operate critical cooling systems that prevent a nuclear disaster.
Earlier in October, Moscow insisted the situation at Zaporizhzhia was “under control” after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued warnings about the risks. Both Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of endangering the site’s safety and of being responsible for the disconnection from the power grid.
