This morning, the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant was blacked out once again. The IAEA reported that its team at the plant heard military sounds and observed smoke rising from a “heavy attack” on a thermal power plant in the adjacent city of Energodar. The switchyard there helps to transmit electricity to ZNPP. Energodar, along with the ZNPP, are both in Russian-controlled areas of their Zaporozhye Oblast, 80% controlled by Russia.
Rosatom, the Russian company that manages the plant, had warned the IAEA that their refusal to take concrete actions in previous attacks ensured that Kiev would continue and would escalate the threat to ZNPP. Yet, once again, the IAEA restricted their report to say that today’s incident is a matter of “serious concern,” due to the facility’s reliance on a single remaining power line, that the IAEA staff at ZNPP remained in shelters, and that the attacks, from unnamed quarters, should cease.
However, Ukraine’s state nuclear operator, Energoatom, as reported by Ukrinform, did not recognize any strike on Energodar’s plant. They posted on Telegram that the outage occurred due to the disconnection of a transmission line—and that it was caused by a Russian drone strike on a substation in Nikopol, in Ukraine’s Dnipro Oblast. By their account, the IAEA personnel must have been mistaken in their seeing and hearing strikes against Energodar. (Nikopol is in a different direction and much farther away, across a broad body of water.)
Nevertheless, Energoatom announced: “Another blackout at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant once again demonstrates the critical risks caused by the illegal occupation of the facility by Russian forces. Every loss of external power creates a direct threat to nuclear and radiation safety.”
It is the case that there were explosions in Nikopol. It certainly appeared on Russia’s Ministry of Defense list of sites they hit—but it wasn’t a substation or a transmission line. It was the Public JSC ‘Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant,’ a producer of manganese ferroalloy and related material.
Where do these ‘emperor with no clothes on’ type of stories end up? The U.S.’s neo-con Institute for the Study of War claimed that Russia may use ZNPP as a pretext for a new large-scale attack on Ukraine.
Will Ukraine keep up its offensive against ZNPP until, like Starobelsk, another ratchet up in Russian responses is generated?
