MELITOPOL, May 15. /TASS/. Staff at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is successfully maintaining safety at the nuclear facility despite periodic shutdowns of external high-voltage power lines from territories controlled by the Kiev regime, the ZNPP’s director of communications, Yevgeniya Yashina, told TASS.
"Since May 7, the plant’s own needs have been filled by a single 750 kV line," she said, noting that the second one had automatically shut down. "Unfortunately, from time to time such cutoffs do happen but we are ready for such situations. The staff knows what to do. There haven’t been any limit or safety violations," Yashina said.
Earlier, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said that the ZNPP’s nuclear safety and security were still under threat due to the unstable external power supply. According to him, it "has been the main Achilles heel" of the ZNPP nuclear safety throughout the Ukrainian conflict. Grossi also insisted that the connection to the backup line cannot currently be restored due to military activity in the area.
In January, the plant’s director Yury Chernichuk told TASS that earlier, four power lines had originated at the nuclear facility which served to deliver generated electricity to consumers. Two of them were knocked out as a result of military actions and the remaining two originate in the territories controlled by the Kiev regime. Their current function is filling the plant’s own needs because the ZNPP has not been producing any electric power for more than two years.
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. Since then, units of the Ukrainian army have periodically conducted shelling both of residential districts in nearby Energodar and the premises of the nuclear plant itself, by means of drones, heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). In most cases, air defense systems repel the attacks, although several times shells hit infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of a nuclear waste storage depot. In order to protect the ZNPP against shelling attacks, engineering structures, forming a safety net of sorts, have been built on its premises. All six power units of the nuclear facility are in a "cold shutdown" mode without producing any electricity.
Experts from the IAEA have been stationed at the nuclear facility since September 2022 with constant rotations.