For about ten hours on Sunday, emergency generators were all that kept the cooling systems running at Europe’s biggest nuclear power station. The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant lost its last working 330-kilovolt line at 2:36am, and an automatic attempt to reconnect it failed. Only late in the day did the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, report that off-site power was back.
It was the 27th total blackout at the site since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the agency said, and the 16th this year by the count of Ukraine’s state operator Energoatom. Agency chief Rafael Grossi said the episode underlined how “precarious” nuclear safety remains. The cause and the exact spot of the fault are still unknown. Russian-installed managers said protective systems had switched off the damaged line and that radiation readings were normal.
The plant’s six reactors, with a combined capacity of 6,000 megawatts, have produced no electricity since September 2022. Even idle, they need a steady supply of power to keep fuel cool, and a failure of the backup generators could lead to a serious accident. The IAEA says the diesel stored on site would last roughly two weeks, and Grossi has urged that the stockpile be increased.
The outage came as Russia kept hammering Ukraine’s energy system. Energy company DTEK said over 600,000 people across Dnipropetrovsk were left in the dark after an overnight attack, while officials in the Kharkiv region reported close to 250,000 customers cut off, with temperatures already near freezing.
Kyiv sees a pattern. Zelensky says the Kremlin is turning up the pressure on purpose before a new round of negotiations, mediated by Washington, opens in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. Ukrainian officials say security guarantees and wider European security will dominate the agenda.
