The military action caused instability in Ukraine’s electricity grid, leading to a reduction in the output of some operating units at the country’s nuclear power plants. This was stated by Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“The military action caused instability in Ukraine’s electricity grid this week,” Grossi said, as quoted by Reuters. According to the IAEA, fluctuations in the grid affected the operation of nuclear facilities and increased the risk to the reliability of external power supplies to nuclear sites.
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Left Without External Power
On November 8, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost its external electricity supply for more than 12 hours following a fault on the 330-kilovolt “Ferosplavna-1” power line. During the outage, four emergency diesel generators switched on automatically, after which their number was reduced to two in order to save fuel.
The IAEA said this was the 27th complete loss of external electricity supply for the plant since the start of the war. The facility has relied on a single external power line since the end of March. Fluctuations in the electricity grid also triggered emergency diesel generators at several facilities at the Chernobyl site.
Russia and Ukraine Exchange Claims of Attacks
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that Russian forces had seized the settlement of Tersyanka in Zaporizhzhia region. Moscow also said it had carried out strikes on Ukrainian energy and transport infrastructure used by the military, ammunition depots, and facilities for the production and storage of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Reuters specified that it had been unable to independently verify the Russian claims regarding developments on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, according to local authorities, a family of three was killed and one person was wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack in Russia’s Belgorod region. The drone struck a residential building in the settlement of Proletarsky, about 20 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. According to other reports, at least nine people were wounded in drone attacks in the region.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that 29 Ukrainian drones had been shot down overnight, including over Moscow region. Ukraine’s Armed Forces said that Russia had attacked Ukraine with 96 drones, of which 81 had been shot down and eight targets had been hit.
Sources: bta.bg