Technicians have successfully completed crucial power line repairs near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), carried out with security assurances provided by both sides under an IAEA-brokered local ceasefire, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said today.

 

It was the third time in recent months that temporary truce arrangements negotiated and supervised by the IAEA enabled the reconnection of power lines vital for nuclear safety that had been damaged during the military conflict. In late October, such a “window of silence” made it possible to end the ZNPP’s tenth and longest complete loss of off-site power event so far during  the conflict.

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This time, it allowed the restoration of power transmission between the electrical switchyards of the ZNPP and the nearby Zaporizhzhya Thermal Power Plant two weeks after it was cut, reportedly due to military activity. The connection is important as it offers a key route for electricity supplied by one of the ZNPP’s two available power lines, a 330 kilovolt (kV) line.

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Monitored by the IAEA team based at the ZNPP, the repairs that began on Sunday morning were completed on Monday afternoon, after both the damaged transmission line and a separate issue with the ZNPP switchyard’s autotransformer had been fully addressed and restored.

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“The successful repairs carried out this week – as well as those in October and November – demonstrate that it is possible for an organisation like the IAEA to work with both sides of the conflict in order to achieve a common objective: preventing a nuclear accident that would be in no one’s interest,” Director General Grossi said.

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“I would like to thank both the Russian Federation and Ukraine for engaging constructively with us in making this possible by agreeing to another localized ceasefire. As a result, we have managed to take a crucial step in support of nuclear safety and security. However, the overall situation at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant and Ukraine’s other nuclear sites remains precarious and our work is far from finished,” he said. 

 

Nuclear power plants need off-site power to cool their reactor and spent fuel and for other essential safety and security functions, even when they are not producing electricity, as is the case with the ZNPP. The plant, Europe’s largest, had 10 power lines available before the conflict, compared with the two that remain now.   

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Text Courtesy, IAEA