One of the largest nuclear power plants in Europe, the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, located on the edge of the Dnipro river in the southeast of Ukraine, is now in the actual frontline area of the south of Ukraine, which was responsible for supplying a fifth of the country's electricity supply, but now completely disconnected from the grid, its emergency diesel generators have been blown for seven consecutive days, setting the longest power outage since the conflict in Russia.
Ukrainian President Zelensky described the situation as "critical", while IAEA Director-General Grozi still failed to promote the restoration of power supply after an emergency meeting with Putin in Moscow.
Disputes behind power disruption
The facility, which has six reactors, is the pillar of Ukraine’s electricity, contributing about 20% of the country’s electricity supply. Since 2022, the reactors have been completely shut down, relying only on external electricity to keep the cooling system running.
On September 23, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in Ukraine fell into complete darkness, and the last external transmission line was cut off. The danger at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant originated from a sudden artillery attack.
According to the news released by the Russian National Atomic Energy Company, on the afternoon of September 23, Ukrainian artillery caused severe damage to the 750 kV high-voltage transmission line that supplied power to the power plant.
However, this statement was immediately refuted by Uzbekistan. Ukraine Energy Minister Grinchuk claimed that Russian shelling cut off the only transmission line connected to Ukraine's energy system, and the two sides once again fell into a deadlock of shirking responsibility.
Ukrainian President Zelensky complained late at night: "Russian shelling is brewing a nuclear disaster. No terrorist in the world dares to do such a crazy thing!"
The IAEA has previously that the six reactors of the nuclear power plant have been down for more than two years, but still need to stabilize the power to maintain the cooling function, and this power outage is the ninth power outage since the February 2022 Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
But the tenth power outage was different from the previous one, and as of September 30, the power plant had not been able to restore external power for seven days in a row, creating the longest record since the conflict began.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Herinchuk said that the nuclear power plant has entered a "total power outage mode", and only 7 of the 18 diesel generators have remained in operation. Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), mentioned in an emergency statement that this is the "most vulnerable moment" for Zaporizhzhia's nuclear power plant.
The operator appointed by Russia emphasized through social media on October 1 that the radiation level of the nuclear power plant is normal, the existing diesel reserves can support the generator to operate for more than 10 days, and the reactor cooling system and spent fuel pool are operating normally."The situation is completely controllable." This level will be maintained through regular off-site replenishment.
But the nuclear power plant has long been supported by emergency power sources, the risk is really big. More worrying is that because the battlefield continues to fire, the artillery around is still ongoing, regardless of the maintenance personnel, can not get close to those damaged lines to do repairs, leading to the damaged line repair work stagnated.
On October 1, Ukrainian President Zelensky issued an emergency warning, calling the one-week power outage a “unprecedented crisis situation”, saying the situation is beyond the capacity of Ukraine to respond.
The threat to nuclear security
For nuclear power plants, power outages are no small matter, which means that the entire power system will be paralyzed. Even if the reactor is in a cold shutdown state, the nuclear fuel in the core will still produce decay heat and cannot be ignored.
Chernobyl's power outage was not an isolated event, and the energy war has become a new code for the Russian game.
In August 2025, the two sides attacked each other's energy facilities in a heated manner: the Ukrainian army launched at least 10 attacks on Russian refineries, causing the paralysis of one-sixth of Russia's refining capacity; the Russian army destroyed 20 Ukrainian energy facilities, including substations and thermal power plants. This strategy of "destroying each other's lifeblood" is intended to weaken the other side's confidence in negotiations, and then nuclear facilities are also involved in the battlefield. In 2025, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant repeatedly interrupted external power supply due to artillery fire, and the IAEA repeatedly warned that "cooling system failure may cause disaster."
The German Ministry of Economy recently announced that it would re-activate some outdated coal-fired power plants in order to compensate for electricity shortages, while Poland is also pushing ahead with Ukraine’s power grid connectivity projects, trying to import power from the power plants there into the EU’s grid.
However, none of these measures can replace the key role of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant-before the war, it provided 25% of Ukraine's electricity supply. Once it was suspended, Ukraine's power grid had major problems, and the entire European energy market was also affected. More worryingly, winter is approaching and energy tensions could intensify the conflict, creating a vicious cycle of blackouts-shelling-bigger blackouts that makes the situation even more intractable.