Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up ZURICH, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has again lost connection to the last remaining main external power line, but continues to supply electricity to the grid through a backup line, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday ( IAEA). The agency also said, in a statement posted on its website, that only one of the plant’s six reactors remained operational. Zaporizhzhia, with six reactors, is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. The station has been controlled by Russian troops since they invaded Ukraine in late February and has become one of the flashpoints of the conflict, with each side blaming the other for shelling around the plant. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up UN nuclear monitoring experts now at the plant were told by Ukrainian personnel that the site’s fourth operational 750-kilovolt power line was down after three others had been lost earlier, the IAEA said. But IAEA experts also learned that a backup line connecting the facility to a nearby thermal power station was delivering electricity to the external grid. This backup line can also provide backup power to the ZNPP if needed, he said. “One reactor is still operating and generating electricity for both cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for households, factories and others through the grid,” the IAEA said. An IAEA mission, led by the agency’s director general Rafael Grossi, toured the plant on Thursday and some experts remained there pending the release of a report on its operations. Transmission lines to the plant were cut last week and the facility was disconnected from the national grid for the first time in its history, causing power outages in several parts of Ukraine. But emergency generators began to provide energy needed for vital cooling processes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed Russian bombing for the outage and said a radioactive leak had almost been avoided. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces tried to seize the Zaporizhia factory in an attack on the facility on Friday night — the second such claim in as many days. Reuters could not confirm details of the Russian accusations. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Report by Michael Shields and Ron Popeski. Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Diane Craft Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
