KYIV, Ukraine – Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant was reconnected to the national grid on Friday afternoon, but its time offline has raised concerns about the plant’s safe operation and consequences for millions of Ukrainians if the power supply is further disrupted.
Ukrainian engineers were able to restore damaged external power lines after repeated shelling on Thursday, ensuring the facility can meet its own power needs and continue to operate. safe, according to Ukrainian and international officials, but the attempt to reconnect to the grid takes longer.
With fires raging around the plant, new shelling in and around the facility was a daily occurrence, and a team of tired and stressed Ukrainian engineers tasked with keeping the Nuclear Power Plant Zaporizhzhia people operate safely, however, the calls for international intervention are growing louder.
“Nowhere in the history of the world has a nuclear power plant been part of a war zone, so this really has to stop immediately,” said Bonnie Denise Jenkins, Minister for Control. Weapons and International Security of the U.S. Department of State, told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. Russia’s actions “have created a serious risk of a nuclear accident – a dangerous radioactive fallout – that could threaten not only the people and environment of Ukraine, but also the neighboring countries,” she said. neighbors and the entire international community”.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine used his nightly address to emphasize the risks, saying emergency systems were operational on Thursday, but if they failed, the country and the world would face a nuclear accident.
And while the immediate threat appears to have been contained, the plant’s disconnection from the national grid has caused widespread power outages across southern Ukraine, adding to the misery caused by caused by war. When fully operational, the plant provides electricity for about 20% of the country, including about four million homes.
The Zhaporizhzhia regional government said that as of Friday morning, energy supplies had been “partially restored” from other sources. Residents across the area reported widespread power outages throughout the night and into the morning.
According to Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, the plant was reconnected to the Ukrainian power grid at 2:04 pm. The agency, in a statement, praised the workers at the plant, who “tirelessly and firmly hold the radiation and nuclear safety of Ukraine and the whole of Europe on their shoulders.” . It is not immediately clear how many are still without power.
Ukrainians in the occupied areas are living in difficult conditions. In eastern Ukraine, heavy Russian shelling and fighting destroyed nearly all the infrastructure needed to provide heat, electricity and clean water, prompting the Ukrainian government to order a mandatory evacuation. More than 200,000 people still live in the region of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas.
The situation in the occupied south was more complicated. Many towns and cities there fell in the first days of the war and were untouched by the widespread devastation witnessed to the east. But if the nuclear plant goes offline again, power to hundreds of thousands of people living in the occupied territories could suffer.
“Southern Ukraine – occupied areas – is already in a state of humanitarian disaster,” Zelensky said. “Apart from all the evil the occupants have brought there, electricity, water and sewage have been cut off.”
Although the plant’s disconnection from the national grid appears to be related to nearby fighting, Ukrainian officials have warned for weeks that Moscow wants to divert power from the plant for its own needs. by disconnecting it from the Ukrainian grid and then reconnecting it to the Russian grid, a potentially complicated process in a war zone that leaves room for accidents.
Ms. Jenkins, a State Department official, said the US was working through the UN Security Council to convince Moscow not to make such a potentially risky move.
“We don’t want that to happen,” she said. “We are continuing to communicate with Russia and through these Security Council discussions and to impress Russia, don’t do it.”
