Grid instability from military activity forced power reductions at some operating Ukrainian nuclear units this week, and fluctuations at the Chornobyl site automatically started emergency diesel generators for several facilities, Director General Rafael Grossi said in the agency’s Update 375. At Zaporizhzhia, damage to the Ferosplavna-1 330 kilovolt line cut all off-site power for more than 12 hours on November 8; four of the site’s emergency diesel generators started automatically, later reduced to two to conserve fuel, and the plant has relied on that single line since late March.
The IAEA said it was informed that one Zaporizhzhia employee was killed in a drone attack on November 9 and another in an explosion on November 10, and that the backup transformer near the Zaporizhzhia thermal power plant, repaired under the eighth local ceasefire the agency facilitated, was destroyed again by military activity. Grossi called for a complete cessation of military activity against electrical infrastructure related to nuclear safety, and for both sides to keep working with the agency to restore the Dniprovska substation and reconnect a 750 kilovolt off-site power line at the plant.