The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) lost external power supply again overnight. This is the 16th such incident since the plant was occupied by Russian troops.
This was reported by IAEA.
For about an hour, the plant operated on emergency diesel generators to power critical safety systems. Later, ZNPP was reconnected to the only available power line.
The cause of the outage has not yet been determined. The IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that the new incident once again showed the possibility of a nuclear hazard at the station.
This is the second major outage at ZNPP in recent days. On May 28, IAEA said that the plant lost landline telephone and internet services for about 12 hours this week, the longest such outage since the occupation began.
What is known about the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP?
The Russians occupied the Zaporizhzhia NPP in early March 2022 and have been operating under their control since then. An IAEA mission has been at the station since September 2022. Ukraine insists on the withdrawal of the Russian occupiers from the station. Russia refuses to create a demilitarized zone at the Zaporizhzhia NPP.
The Zaporizhzhia NPP has repeatedly lost external power supply due to hostilities near the plant. In such cases, it switched to backup diesel generators. The longest was the tenth blackout, which occurred due to Russian shelling and lasted a month — from September 23 to October 23, 2025.
The issue of the Zaporizhzhia NPP remains among the key ones in the trilateral talks between Ukraine, the United States and Russia. In January, Politico, citing sources, wrote that Russia had proposed during the talks to share the electricity from the Zaporizhzhia NPP between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has already stated that such an idea looks unrealistic. Instead, he proposed that the Zaporizhzhia NPP be operated by Ukraine and the United States.
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