MOSCOW, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Power has been restored to the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, hours after the plant lost its external electricity supply and had to use backup generators for reactor cooling, the UN’s nuclear watchdog said on Sunday.
Zaporizhzhia, which does not produce electricity but needs power supplied by two external links to keep nuclear fuel cool, lost its off-site electricity supply earlier on Sunday after the Ferosplavna power line disconnected.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said that the cause and location of the disconnection were not known. The loss of power was the plant’s 27th such incident since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the IAEA added.
The plant’s Russian-installed management had said the Ferosplavna line had been shut down by “automatic protection”, adding that radiation levels on the site and in the surveillance zone were normal.
In early September, a local ceasefire brokered by the IAEA took effect to allow repairs to restore external power to Zaporizhzhia, which at that time had been without it since August 20.
But the IAEA said on October 23 that the main Dniprovska power line remained unavailable.
Russia seized the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest with six reactors, in the first weeks of the war that began with Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbour.
Moscow and Kyiv have since regularly accused each other of military action that compromises nuclear safety.
(Reporting by Reuters and Rishabh Jaiswal and Sumedha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Helen Popper and Bill Berkrot)
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