Due to power outages caused by Russian shelling, the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is operating on diesel generators, and it is unknown how much fuel remains there.
This was stated by Ukrainian Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk in a comment to LB.live.
“The station runs on diesel generators. The station has never used these diesel generators for so long – they have been there since the station was built, from the very beginning of its operation, so to speak. But they were used only in exceptional cases, several times,” said Hrynchuk.
The minister said that initially, the Ukrainian side provided the station with fuel for the generators, but now there is no access.
“This is the 10th blackout during the war, but the longest before this was two and a half days – now we have already had 10. And we don’t know when it will end. In the first months, there were cases when we tried to provide the station with fuel on our own so that the generators could work in case of blackouts. Now we have not had access to the station for quite a long time. Therefore, we cannot say anything definite about fuel reserves – we do not have this information,” said the head of the Ministry of Energy.
Hrynchuk noted that IAEA representatives at the station “should, in principle, monitor this”.
“But the fact that the generators have not been used in this mode for quite a long time means that anything could happen,” said the minister.
She added that one generator had broken down and several were being repaired. “The situation is very fragile,” Hrynchuk stressed.
- On 23 September, as a result of the shutdown of the high-voltage line supplying the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhya NPP, the station lost power for its own needs from the Ukrainian power grid.
- Later, Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said that Russia was creating conditions for connecting the Zaporizhzhya NPP to its power grid and was trying to involve the IAEA in this process.
- According to the IAEA, the Zaporizhzhya NPP has been without its main power source for ten days and is operating only thanks to backup diesel generators. Fuel reserves for their operation will last for about 10 days.
- The agency’s Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi, stressed that the situation is extremely unstable and poses serious risks to nuclear and radiation safety. If the backup systems are shut down, there is a risk of nuclear fuel melting.