UN, October 29. /TASS/. The situation at the Zaporozhye nuclear power station remains extremely serious, a ceasefire is needed there to start repairs, Director General of the International Nuclear Energy Agency Rafael Grossi said.
"The situation continues to be very, very serious," he said. "We need to mediate between the two sides to obtain a silence or a truce so that the repair work could be done," he told a news conference.
Grossi added that restoration of the Ferroalloy-1 transmission line at the plant was underway.
The power supply to the Zaporozhye station has been provided by emergency diesel generators since September 23, because all external power lines were damaged by fighting and are not functioning. The last one, a 750 kV Dneprovskaya high-voltage transmission line, was damaged in the area of the station by Ukrainian shelling on September 23. Previously, specialists could not begin to restore it because of the incessant enemy strikes. Another 330 kV Ferroalloy-1 line has been disconnected since May 7. The damage is located on the territory controlled by Ukraine on the right bank of the Dnepr River.
On October 9, the IAEA said that restoring external power supply to the plant had begun after the agency's contacts with Russia and Ukraine. On October 15, Rosatom head Alexey Likhachev said that a regime of silence without fighting on both sides was planned to repair the damaged lines. According to him, the restoration of the Dneprovskaya and Ferroalloy-1 power lines may take six to seven days.