The world “escaped a radiation disaster” when electricity from Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was cut off for hours, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday night.
In a video posted on the Ukrainian presidency’s website, Zelenskyy said Russian artillery fire on Thursday sparked fires in the ashes of a nearby coal-fired power plant, which then disconnected the Zaporizhzhia plant from the power grid.
The president added that emergency diesel generators have been maintaining the power supply essential to the plant’s cooling and safety systems, praising Ukrainian technicians who “keep the plant running under the watchful eye of the Russian military.”
“If the staff of our plant had not reacted after the breakdown, we would have already been forced to overcome the consequences of a radiological accident,” he said.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian state-owned operator of the country’s four nuclear power plants, said that electricity for the needs of this infrastructure was now being supplied by a line from the Ukrainian grid, while work continues to restore the grid connection of the plant’s two working reactors.
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