The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned this Wednesday of a new power cut to Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the second in five days that depends on emergency generators for safety.
“This morning, our team at the Zaporizhzhya NPP informed me that the plant has lost all external energy for the second time in five days,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in a Twitter message quoted by Spanish agency EFE. .
When disconnected from the external power grid, the station depends on diesel generators to provide cooling for six nuclear reactors and prevent the melting of their cores, which could lead to a potentially catastrophic release of radioactivity.
Grossi confirmed that the generators were working, but warned that repeated power outages were “deeply disturbing”.
“This highlights the urgent need to create a nuclear safety and security zone around the facility,” said Grossi, quoted by the US AP news agency.
The Vienna-based IAEA advocates a security zone around the station, and to that end Grossi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.
The IAEA has two observers at the plant in Zaporozhye, the largest of its kind in Europe.
Russia and Ukraine accused each other of bombing the plant, which damaged some of the facility’s buildings and the power supply system.
The Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom said the outage was caused by a Russian missile attack on the Dniprovska substation in the Dnepropetrovsk region north of Zaporozhye.
Energoatom has previously warned of the danger that emergency generators will run out of fuel or fail to operate for whatever reason, which could lead to a catastrophic nuclear holocaust.
The most serious accident at a nuclear power plant occurred in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, when the country was part of the Soviet Union.
After the IAEA warning, the pro-Russian acting head of Zaporozhye, Yevgeny Balitsky, said that nothing threatened the plant.
“It works, although it is in the “cold stop” mode, that is, it does not feed the power grid, but works for your needs. He has all the necessary funds: diesel generators, fuel, personnel,” Balitsky said. public television Rossiya 24, reports EFE.
Volodymyr Rogov, leader of the “Together with Russia” movement in Zaporozhye, blamed the Ukrainian bombings for the shutdown and said the power supply to the station “was restored within an hour” after the generators started up.
Russia said it took over the plant after it annexed the Zaporozhye region in late September, along with Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson.
Russian forces have been bombing Ukrainian energy infrastructure for the past two days in retaliation for Saturday’s Crimean Bridge explosion, which Moscow blamed on Ukrainian intelligence.
The bridge, opened by Putin in 2018, is seen by Moscow as a symbol of its sovereignty over the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
The bridge was used to resupply Russian troops in southern Ukraine, which Russia invaded on February 24 this year.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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