MELITOPOL, May 22. /TASS/. The external power supply to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which was disrupted in the morning, has been restored and the plant is operating normally, the NPP’s Director Yury Chernichuk said on Monday.

"At 2:20 p.m. Moscow time, electricity to the Zaporozhye NPP was restored. The station is operating as usual. Diesel generators were stopped and put on standby," the nuclear power plant’s press service quoted the director as saying.

The 750-kW Dneprovskaya overhead circuit is in operation. The 750-kW Zaporozhskaya, Yuzhno-Donbasskaya and Kakhovskaya lines have been disconnected," the director said.

Chernichuk noted that the background radiation on the territory of the NPP and in the sanitary protection zone is normal, standing at 0.11 mcSv/h. "The radiation situation corresponds to the natural background around the Zaporozhye NPP. There are no irregularities in the operation of the plant," he said.

The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant lost its external power supply early on Monday and was switched to generators, the plant’s press service said. Later, Ukraine’s national energy company, Ukrenergo, said it had restored electricity to the ZNPP.

Located in Energodar, the Zaporozhye nuclear facility, with roughly 6GW of capacity, is the largest of its kind in Europe. Russia took control of the plant on February 28, 2022, in the first days of its special military operation in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin decreed that ZNPP facilities be transferred to Russia’s ownership and ordered the government to establish the Federal State Unitary Enterprise, Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, in order to ensure the safety of its facilities.