Nuclear meltdown fears as Zaporizhzhia’s plant ‘loses all off-site power’ | World | News
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe and one of the 10 largest nuclear power plants in the world, lost all its off-site electricity overnight, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said. Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), added that this marks the eleventh time such an incident has occurred since the start of full-scale war in February 2022.
The IAEA wrote that the outage in X lasted half an hour and the 750 kV line was still down. The tweet read: “Ukraine’s ZNPP temporarily lost all off-field power overnight for the 11th time during the military conflict,” @rafaelmgrossi said.
“ZNPP was reconnected to the 330 kV power line after half an hour of outage, but the 750 kV line is still disconnected.”
This came after Russia launched one of its largest air strikes against Ukraine overnight. In the massive missile and drone attack, Russia used 653 unmanned aerial vehicles and 51 missiles.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defense had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory by Saturday.
The incident triggered air raid sirens across the country and occurred as Ukraine was celebrating Armed Forces Day, Ukraine’s air force said in a statement Saturday morning.
Vitaliy Zaichenko, head of Ukraine’s state grid operator Ukrenergo, told the Kiev Independent that the attack was “quite severe” for Ukraine’s energy system.
“Other nuclear power plants are currently operating below full capacity for safety reasons,” he added.
Thermal power plants operated by DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, were also targeted during the strikes.
The company said power generation equipment was “severely damaged”, although it did not specify the specifications of the facilities for safety reasons.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defense had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory by Saturday.
The latest wave of attacks coincided with the third day of talks with the US President, scheduled for Saturday. Donald Trump‘s advisors and Ukrainian officials said they were making progress toward creating a security framework for post-war Ukraine.
The statement said that during the talks, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Ukrainian national security council secretary Rustem Umerov “agreed on the framework of security arrangements” that could accompany a peace agreement and “discussed the deterrence necessary to maintain a lasting peace.”
