Blackouts continue in Ukraine after the Russian military launched a retaliatory attack last Sunday. The IAEA said key substations associated with the supply of electricity to Ukrainian nuclear power plants were severely damaged.
“On the night of November 16-17, four of these substations and their power lines were again attacked, forcing Ukraine’s operating nuclear power plants to reduce power production as a precaution.” — said the head of the IAEA in a statement Rafael Grossi.
He noted that the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine was disconnected from two 750 kV power lines for maintenance on November 21 and is still operating with its backup systems.
“Increasing instability of the power grid is a growing source of nuclear safety concern affecting all nuclear power plants,” the agency’s director general said.
Early in the morning of November 17, the Russian military launched a retaliatory attack against Ukraine’s energy grid. DTEK and the IAEA announced serious damage to thermal power plants and substations. The agency reported that the power of six of nine nuclear power units had to be reduced to 40-90%. At the same time, Reuters reported, citing sources, that three of the five thermal power plants in operation were affected. One of them, Burshtynskaya, is completely unusable and the repair time for the rest is unknown.
Since November 18, blackouts have resumed across the country of Ukraine, and it took three days to restore power to Odessa.
As reported EADaily In September, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began monitoring key substations in Ukraine, on which the electricity supply of the three nuclear power plants that remain under kyiv’s control and the operation of the reactors themselves depend. In fact, these are all the main substations in the country, as nuclear generation produces three-quarters of the electricity in Ukraine.
The West and kyiv apparently hoped that additional surveillance missions would stop retaliatory attacks on Ukraine’s most important substations “due to the threat to nuclear security.” But this did not work, since, for example, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant exists in worse conditions, but does not pose a threat to nuclear security if it is not subjected to bombing by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
