MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/. One of the Zaporozhye NPP’s two power units that had to be disconnected from the power grid on Thursday after a bombardment by Ukraine’s armed forces is back in operation, the head of the military-civilian administration (MCA) of the Zaporozhye Region, Yevgeny Balitsky, has said.
"Today, as a result of a strike by Ukraine’s forces on high-voltage power lines in the area of the Zaporozhye NPP there was a fire in the territory of the security zone of the 750 kV power line. The fire caused a short circuit. The emergency protection system turned off two power units. A power outage in the whole of the Zaporozhye Region followed. Immediately after the fire was extinguished one power unit was put into operation," Balitsky wrote in his telegram channel.
Balitsky added that work was underway to restore power supply to the Zaporozhye Region and re-commission the other ZNPP power unit disconnected from the network. Power supply to all cities and districts of the region has been restored.
Earlier, the Ukrainian company Energoatom - the ZNPP’s operator - claimed that for the first time ever it had been completely disconnected from the power grid.
On Thursday, the media resource Zaporozhsky Vestnik said electricity supply for Melitopol, Energodar and a number of other localities of the Zaporozhye Region had been disrupted due to the Ukrainian army’s shelling of Energodar. A field near Energodar reportedly caught fire, which caused a short circuit at a substation.
Situation at Zaporozhye NPP
The Zaporozhye NPP is located on the left bank of the Dnieper, next to the city of Energodar. With its six water-cooled water moderated 1000-megawatt VVER-1000 power units the Zaporozhye NPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. As Russia’s Defense Ministry has repeatedly said, Ukrainian forces have delivered several strikes on the NPP’s premises, using, among other things, drones, heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems. The majority of attacks have been deflected by air defense systems, however, shells hit some infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of a nuclear waste storage facility, which is fraught with the risk of radiation leaks.