An attempt by Russia to connect the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the Russian grid in time for Vladimir Putin’s birthday earlier this month was foiled by Ukrainian forces operating behind enemy lines.
The six-reactor plant was instead reconnected by Russian engineers to external electrical power from Ukraine on Thursday morning, ending a month-long emergency during which the site had to rely on diesel generators to power cooling systems.
Ukrainian sources said they believed Russsia had wanted to link Europe’s biggest nuclear plant on 7 October as a birthday present for Putin – a step to at least partially restart generation on the site.
But the effort was foiled by Ukrainian partisans, who attacked substations behind the lines in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, damaging a newly completed high-voltage connection that ran from the plant to Mariupol and the Russian grid.
As a result, the sources said, Russia had little choice but to repair a 750-kilovolt line that runs from the plant – controlled by Russia since March 2022 – across the Dnipro River and the frontlines into Ukrainian-held territory to restore the supply of external electricity.
Similar comments were made earlier this month by Volodymyr Omelchenko, an energy expert at Ukraine’s Razumkov Centre thinktank, in an interview with Ukraine’s Espresso TV. He said the plant’s Russian occupiers had wanted to “make a gift” to Putin but the guerrilla operation on 6 October prevented that from taking place.
On 7 October, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-appointed governor of the occupied Zaporzhzhia region, reported power cuts across “all settlements” in the area after what he described as a terrorist attack by enemy drones.
Prior to its reconnection, the nuclear power plant had been relying on backup diesel generators to supply electricity necessary for cooling for a period well beyond the standard three-day safety limit, after the 750kv line was cut on 23 September.
Although the six reactors are in a state of cold shutdown, without constant cooling they would risk eventually overheating over a period of weeks, prompting warnings of a slow-motion Fukushima-style nuclear disaster.
“Thirty days after the complete loss of external power supply, electricity supply has been resumed,” the Russian administrators of the site announced, saying it had been done after Ukraine agreed to a temporary local ceasefire brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Soon afterwards, the IAEA confirmed that the reconnection had been completed. Rafael Grossi, the director general of the nuclear safety watchdog, said: “Today is a rare good day for nuclear safety and security in Ukraine and beyond, although the overall situation of course remains highly precarious.”
Ukraine and independent experts have accused Russia of deliberately damaging the high-voltage line last month to provoke a crisis so that it could reconnect the power station to the Russian grid instead.
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The Zaporizhzhia power plant was captured by Russian forces in March 2022 and has remained on the frontline since, an unprecedented situation for a working nuclear facility. Its reactors were gradually put into shutdown for safety reasons but Russia has indicated it would like to restart at least some of the reactors.
A technical paper submitted by Russia to the IAEA on 3 June said that in the event of the external power lines to the plant being disconnected from Ukraine, “a procedure for voltage transmission … from the unified power system of Russia” had “been developed”.
In September, Alexey Likhachev, the director general of Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy corporation, told Russian television he had “repeatedly reported” to Putin that the company was ready to restart generating electricity first “to our territories” but also potentially to Ukraine “if, of course, the conditions arise”.
The nuclear power plant has featured in peace talks involving Donald Trump and Putin, but while at one point Trump said he hoped the US would take over the running of the site, the Kremlin has made it clear it regards it as Russian.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
