The Zaporizhzhia plant remains disconnected from the national power grid, leaving people without power.

Aug 26, 2022

The Zaporizhzhia plant remains disconnected from the national power grid, leaving people without power.

With Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant still disconnected from the national power grid on Friday morning, there was growing concern not only over the safe operation of the plant but the consequences for millions of Ukrainians — many living in Russian-controlled regions of the south.

On Thursday, the plant was cut off from the electrical grid after fires damaged the last operating regular transmission line, according to Ukraine’s nuclear power agency, Energoatom.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed Russian shelling and said the plant’s emergency backup diesel generators had to be activated to supply power needed to run the plant.

Zaporizhzhia’s Russian-installed regional governor, Yevgeny Balitsky, blamed the transmission-line damage on a Ukrainian attack.

It was not immediately clear whether the damaged line carried outgoing electricity or incoming power, needed for the reactors’ vital cooling systems.

A backup line supplying electricity from another plant remained in place, Energoatom said.

But Zelenskyy’s mention of the emergency generators being activated raised questions of whether the cooling systems were endangered. A loss of cooling could cause a nuclear meltdown.

As a result of the transmission-line damage, the two reactors still in use out of the plant’s six went offline, Balitsky said, but one was quickly restored, as was electricity to the region.

Many nuclear plants are designed to automatically shut down or at least reduce reactor output in the event of a loss of outgoing transmission lines.

The U.N.’s International Atomic Agency said Ukraine informed it that the reactors’ emergency protection systems were triggered, and all safety systems remained operational.