Zaporizhzhia plant down to diesel generators where bombing cuts off the power necessary for cooling

Kyiv/VIENNA (October 8) (Reuters) – Ukraine’s state nuclear power company and the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency said night-time bombing cut power to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear plant that needs cooling to avoid melting, forcing it to switch. to emergency generators. Saturday.

Although the six reactors are closed, they still need a continuous supply of electricity to keep the nuclear fuel inside cool and prevent disaster.

Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the bombing of the site of Europe’s largest nuclear plant, destroying buildings and threatening a catastrophic nuclear accident. The IAEA is pushing for the creation of a protection zone to prevent further bombing.

Speaking to BBC World News on Saturday, Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom, warned diesel generators of only limited fuel supplies at the moment.

“Currently we are working on the logistics to provide more fuel for these generators,” he said.

Energoatom did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the status of negotiations with the Russian authorities regarding the station’s refueling.

“If (the generators) run out of fuel, they will stop after that, and then there will be a catastrophe … There will be melting in the active core and radioactive emission from there,” Cotten said.

The nuclear plant is located in a part of Russia’s recently annexed Zaporizhia region, a move that Ukraine and its allies rejected as an imperial land grab.

In a decree published on Saturday, the Russian government created a company to control the plant, as President Vladimir Putin ordered on Oct. 5.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which includes two monitors at the plant, confirmed Energoatum’s statement that the plant had switched to its own diesel generators after bombing at about 1 am cut the 750-kilovolt main line that supplies the plant with external power.

“The resumption of the bombing, which hit the plant’s only external energy source, is highly irresponsible. The Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant must be protected,” the agency quoted its head, Rafael Grossi, as saying in a statement. statement.

“All safety systems of the plant continue to receive power and are operating normally, and the agency’s experts (based in Zaporizhia) have been informed by Ukrainian senior operating personnel,” the IAEA said.

Grossi has held talks with Russia and Ukraine about creating a protection zone around the plant, though he declined to say exactly what that would include or how it would be implemented or monitored. He was in Kyiv on Thursday and is scheduled to travel to Russia early next week.

“I will soon travel to the Russian Federation, and then return to Ukraine, to agree on a nuclear safety and security zone around the plant. This is imperative and urgent,” the agency quoted Grossi as saying.

(Reporting by Max Hunder and Francois Murphy); Editing by Catherine Evans, Rose Russell and Nick McPhee

Our criteria: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.