A simmering crisis at Europe's largest nuclear plant is drawing renewed concern: The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia facility in southeastern Ukraine has been offline for six days, its longest blackout since the start of the war. The latest external power outage follows last Tuesday's failure of the last high-voltage power line connecting the plant to Ukraine's grid, in a combat zone where blame for the damage is sharply divided, per the Guardian. Russia blames Ukrainian shelling, while Ukraine says Russia is manufacturing a crisis to justify hooking the plant to its own power system, a move analysts say could shift the balance of power in any future peace talks, per the New York Times.
"The world cannot allow this," said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, who met with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi on Monday, adding that the "only realistic option" is to temporarily transfer stewardship of the plant to the IAEA, per Reuters. The failure has raised fears of an eventual breakdown of cooling systems at the plant.
While there's no immediate risk of a meltdown—the plant's six reactors have been dormant since 2022 and require less cooling than active ones—experts warn that every layer of lost safety raises the odds of an accident in a facility already operating under wartime stress. The plant sits on an active front line, its staff have faced intimidation and alleged torture, and its main source of cooling water vanished after a dam explosion in 2023. Backup diesel generators are keeping the reactors cool for now, per the Times, but they can only last so long—about 10 days, according to the IAEA.
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