Ukrainian nuclear power plant without external power for over a week

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southeastern Ukraine has been without off-site power for more than a week, the world’s nuclear energy watchdog has warned.

The plant, which Russia has occupied since 2022, is currently relying on emergency diesel generators, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday.

The plant needs power to keep its six non-operating reactors cool and has only a 10-day diesel supply on site, the IAEA said in a statement.

“The availability of diesel fuel is of paramount importance whenever a nuclear power plant loses off-site power,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has not had a delivery from an off-site storage facility in about six months but was supplied with diesel on Thursday and Friday from another off-site location, the IAEA said.

The Vienna-based agency is now trying to negotiate a local ceasefire to allow repairs to electrical lines.

Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. It has not generated electricity since September 2022, over six months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February that year, but the plant’s reactors must be kept cool to prevent a meltdown of the fuel inside.

“This is the 27th blackout at the plant since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” Ukraine’s deputy head of military law enforcement, Gyunduz Mamedov, wrote on X on Saturday.

The IAEA has had a permanent presence at the site since September 2022, after Russia took control of the Ukrainian facility in March that year.

Both sides in the conflict regularly accuse the other of attacking the site, which sits on the banks of the Dnipro River and demarcates the front line in the sector.

On Friday, the IAEA said there had been three incidents that week with drones at the plant, injuring two employees. It did not say who launched the drones.

Earlier this month, a drone strike close to the plant killed one nuclear specialist and wounded 17, with Moscow asserting that Kyiv was behind the attack.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly warned that Russian actions in and around the plant constitute nuclear blackmail against Ukraine and Europe more widely.

In 2024, footage emerged of a fire in one of the power plant’s cooling towers, prompting Ukraine to accuse Russia of nuclear blackmail.