Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi announced today that he will brief the United Nations Security Council on Thursday about the nuclear safety and security situation at Ukraine's Zaporizhzya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and his efforts to agree and lead an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expert mission to the site as soon as possible.
Separately today, Ukraine informed the IAEA about the restoration of a power line that can be used to supply the ZNPP with electricity from a nearby thermal power plant if needed.
Director General Grossi said this was a positive development, coming a day after the Ukrainian regulator informed the IAEA that the ZNPP continued to have limited availability of off-site power. It had earlier said that shelling on Friday damaged the plant's external power supply system. In addition to the restored back-up line to the thermal power plant, the ZNPP has one operational power line connecting it to the grid out of a total of four such lines.
The need for secure off-site power supply from the grid is among the seven indispensable nuclear safety and security pillars that the Director General outlined at the beginning of the conflict.
Ukraine also informed the IAEA today that ten of the country's 15 nuclear energy reactors are currently connected to the grid, including two at the ZNPP, three at the Rivne NPP, three at the South Ukraine NPP, and two at the Khmelnytskyy NPP.
