Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant without external power again – diesel generators running, fuel for about two weeks

Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, at Zaporizhzhia, has been running on diesel generators since the early hours of Sunday, November 8, after the last line keeping it connected to the Ukrainian grid was cut. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) now counts 27 full blackouts at the plant since the war began. The new outage came during a night of Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy system that left hundreds of thousands of consumers in the dark.

The state-owned Energoatom, the plant’s legitimate operator — the site has been under Russian occupation since 2022 — describes how the fault unfolded: at 02:36 Ukrainian time the 330 kV “Ferosplavna-1” line, the only one still operating, disconnected. Automatic reconnection failed, and the plant’s internal needs have been covered solely by backup generators since. For the company this is the 16th incident of complete loss of external power in 2026. If the generators fail or run out of fuel, it warns, the systems that cool the nuclear fuel are at risk, with the danger of a radiological accident. For Energoatom, safety will be restored only when the plant returns to Kyiv’s control.

Fuel for about two weeks

The IAEA team permanently stationed at the plant was told that the diesel on site is enough to run a limited number of generators for about two weeks. Where and why the line was cut has not yet been clarified. The agency’s Director General, Rafael Grossi, considers the new blackout proof of how “precarious” nuclear safety at Zaporizhzhia remains, and calls for two steps: restoring the grid connection and strengthening the fuel reserves inside the plant.

Ukraine’s Energy Ministry, in its morning update, blames the loss of power on Russian bombardment. The same night Russia struck energy facilities again, causing new outages in the Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Sumy, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions.

Dnipropetrovsk region took the heaviest damage, with more than 600,000 residents left without electricity. In the Kharkiv region the strikes left about 250,000 consumers without power, which was later restored. Nationwide, more than 850,000 people lost power after the overnight strikes. The transmission system operator Ukrenergo imposed emergency outages in the Kharkiv, Sumy and Poltava regions, where the scheduled timetables do not apply, and estimates that all consumers in the Dnipropetrovsk region will have power again by the end of Sunday, initially on a rotating basis. In the capital region, where the situation had already been described as “extremely difficult” after the strikes on Kyiv, restrictions on the grid remain in force.

Attacks on the infrastructure that nuclear plants depend on have multiplied in recent weeks. On October 30 the IAEA announced that it had completed its ninth mission, since September 2024, to 19 electrical substations critical to the country’s nuclear safety. A few days earlier, on October 27, the Slavutych substation, one of them, lost all its 330 kV lines after an attack. On Saturday, November 7, the Energy Ministry recorded damage also to lines carrying power from nuclear plants to the capital and central Ukraine. The same day Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal agreed with his German counterpart Katherina Reiche to apply diplomatic pressure on Moscow over the strike on a substation critical to the Khmelnytskyi nuclear plant.