The UN says it is working to restore power supply to the Zaporizhia power plant

2025-10-01 12:54:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is working to restore power supply to the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, the head of the United Nations agency said.

IAEA Secretary General Rafael Grossi said he is working with both parties to the armed conflict to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier that the situation at the nuclear power plant was critical as it entered its seventh day of emergency. The plant's power supply was being provided by diesel generators, Zelensky said, adding that Russian shelling was preventing the repair of power lines at the plant and the restoration of basic safety measures.

" Due to Russian shelling, the power plant has been left without power, disconnected from the electrical grid and is being supplied with electricity through diesel generators ," he wrote on X.

" This is an extraordinary situation. The generators at the plant are not designed for this, they have never operated for this long and we already have information that one generator has broken down."

Zelensky said there is a threat "to everyone" and no terrorist "has ever dared to do what Russia is doing to this nuclear power plant."

Grossi said he was "in constant contact with both parties in order to enable the rapid reconnection of the plant to the electricity grid."

" While the plant is currently coping with the situation thanks to emergency diesel generators — the last line of defense — and there is no immediate danger as long as they continue to operate, this is clearly not a sustainable situation from a nuclear safety point of view ," he said in a statement, according to Reuters.

"No party would benefit from a nuclear incident ," he added.

Gross said both sides have said that nuclear activity has prevented them from carrying out necessary repairs.

Ukraine's nuclear energy authority, Enerhoatom, announced the tenth outage at the Zaporizhzhia plant on September 23, saying the last power line connecting the plant to the Ukrainian electricity system had been disconnected.

IAEA representatives at the plant confirmed that emergency generators had begun operating to supply the plant with electricity.

Zaporizhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. It fell under Russian control shortly after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The plant's reactors have been shut down, but the plant needs energy to maintain safety functions, such as cooling the reactors./ REL