The outer power supply of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizia, which is in possession of Russiahas discontinued external power supply for more than three days, a record stop that has caused concerns about the station’s safety in Ukraine.
At nuclear station, which operates with six reactors, generators are used emergency To feed the systems cooling and security. After it was interrupted, the station’s finish line, which crossed the Dnieper and was connected with ground in Ukraine, was destroyed on Tuesday (23.09.2025) on the side controlled by Russia.
Since then, the station has been operating with seven of the 18 generators available. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has announced that there is fuel adequacy for about 20 days. Rafael Grossi, General Manager of the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA), described the situation as “deeply worrying“And he met with Vladimir Putin, but the situation remains the same.
The IAEA said Russian operators informed him that there was enough diesel to supply generators for 20 days without fuel replenishment. However, Grossi said the loss of external power “increases the chance of nuclear accident”.
At a time when Moscow blames Kiev of ‘continuous bombardment“The region, something that Ukraine rejects as unacceptably dangerous, western experts and Ukrainian officials fearing that the Kremlin is creating a crisis to consolidate its control over the station, which is the largest in Europe. At the same time there is concern that Russia is taking high risk measures to put in place at least one reactor, despite the war conditions.
“Russia is using the nuclear station as a negotiating paper,” said a Ukrainian government official, while a Greenpeace expert said the Russian occupation has entered “A new critical and possibly devastating phase».
Russia occupied Zaporizia Nuclear Station In March 2022 and his reactors, who once could feed 4 million householdswere put in cold interruption for security reasons.
Fukushima and 72 -hour tests
Strength tests carried out by European regulators after the destruction of the Japanese reactor to Fukushima In 2011 they showed that a nuclear station must be able to operate without external power for 72 hours. The overrun of this time limit has not been testedaccording to sources from Ukraine.
Ukraine considers the nuclear station as its own, but the station has been negotiated between Donald Trump and Putin. Trump has tried to propose that the US must take control, while the Kremlin has stated that it wants to restart all reactors and connect them to the Russian network – a project that is only possible in peace.
External power supply has been interrupted nine times in the past in Zaporizia. In any case, the damage was caused to territories controlled by Ukraine by Russian forces that hit energy infrastructure along the Dnieper. The 750 -kilovolt electricity line crossed the river, with Ukraine being willing to provide energy to maintain safety.
An accelerated version of this scenario occurred in Fukushima, because the reactors had just been put into operation. An earthquake of size 9.0 Richter hit Japan And the warm reactors at the factory automatically closed as a reaction. Emergency generators continued to draw cooling water around the reactor, but they were destroyed by the tsunami which followed a few minutes later. Three nuclear reactors in factory were subjected to melting Within three days, although the fuel remained limited. No one was not killedbut more than 100,000 people evacuated the station.