The Zaporizhzhia NPP has been brought out of the longest blackout, which lasted a month, and has been reconnected to the Ukrainian energy system, Minister of Energy Svitlana Hrynchuk said on Thursday during a telethon, UNN reports.
Today marks exactly one month since the station (ZNPP - ed.) was in a blackout, and it has been reconnected to the Ukrainian energy system for about 20 minutes (as of 9 o'clock - ed.). The blackout, which lasted a month, was truly an unprecedented event in general. (...) Now the station has been brought out of the 10th blackout - the longest one
"ZNPP is out of blackout: energy workers have restored power to the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. This allowed the station to be brought out of the mode of a complete - the tenth in a row - blackout, in which it had been for the last month," the minister added on Facebook.
After the completion of repairs to the 750 kV Dniprovska line, repairs to the 330 kV Ferrosplavna line are ongoing
All this time, the safety of Europe's largest nuclear power plant, according to her, was maintained exclusively by the operation of emergency diesel generators. This created an unprecedented threat to nuclear and radiation safety not only of Ukraine, but also of the entire European continent, the minister emphasized.
"The reason for the month-long power outage was the actions of the Russian occupation forces, which systematically shell and damage power lines connecting the ZNPP to the integrated energy system of Ukraine," Hrynchuk noted.
She pointed out that Ukrainian energy workers have restored the station's power lines 42 times since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. "At the same time, the only way to guarantee long-term nuclear safety is the complete demilitarization, de-occupation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP and its return under the full legal control of the Ukrainian operator - Energoatom," the Minister of Energy emphasized.