(Bloomberg) -- The United Nations atomic watchdog reinforced warnings on safety risks in Russia’s war on Ukraine after Europe’s largest nuclear power plant lost a back-up power link for 36 hours earlier this week.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine lost supply from its only remaining back-up power line before it was restored late Wednesday.
“The off-site power situation remains a deep source of concern,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement. The disruption “shows that the situation is not improving in this regard, on the contrary.”
The agency and Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly warned that fighting around the plant in Zaporizhzhia poses an urgent risk, particularly to substations that feed the nuclear plant with power needed to keep systems running.
The plant has lost external power eight times during the conflict, forcing engineers to maintain electricity supplies with diesel generators, the IAEA said.
An IAEA team found that shelling at a substation in nearby Enerhodar had destroyed a transformer and had damaged a nearby power line earlier in the week, the agency said. The IAEA last month took the unusual step of expanding its monitoring mission to include substations.
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