Zaporizhzhia loses its last power line for the 16th time since the start of 2026
Key Facts
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost all external power at 02:36 on November 8, after its last operating line linking it to Ukraine’s electricity system went down, according to Energoatom. The company said the line, known as Ferrosplavna-1, operates at 330 kilovolts and that an attempt to restart it automatically failed. The plant’s operational needs are now being met exclusively by backup diesel generators. Energoatom described the incident as the 16th time the plant has lost all external power since the start of 2026. The outage again focuses attention on the plant’s reliance on backup power sources while its connection to the external grid is disrupted.
The figure reported by the company counts instances of a complete loss of external power since the start of the year, not the number of times a particular line has failed. The current incident concerns the last operating line, Ferrosplavna-1, whose supply to the plant was lost at a specific time, after which an automatic restart attempt failed. Energoatom did not identify the cause of the outage in its statement, so the company did not attribute the incident to damage to energy infrastructure or to any other cause. It confirmed that the plant is currently relying on diesel generators to meet its operational needs. This means the facility’s electricity supply depends on those generators, according to the operator’s statement, until external power is restored.
Energoatom warned of the risks of diesel generator failure or depletion of their fuel supply, saying this could disrupt the plant’s support systems and nuclear fuel cooling. It added that this could lead to a “radiological accident.” The company’s warning links the continued operation of the generators to the facility’s ability to support its essential systems, without the statement reporting a generator failure or a cooling malfunction. The company did not say how long the fuel would last or estimate how long the generators could operate. The statement also gave no expected time for the line’s restoration or details of an attempt to repair it.
The background to the external connection dates to September 7, when Energoatom said power was restored at 19:02 through the same Ferrosplavna-1 line, after an outage that began on August 20. The 330-kilovolt line was the external supply route cited when the connection was restored, before the plant lost it again on November 8. In a separate statement in September, the company said all of the plant’s units were in cold shutdown. It warned at the time that a loss of electricity threatened control of safety systems, spent fuel pools and operating parameters. This history places the plant’s current reliance on diesel generators in the context of repeated interruptions to its grid connection, while the reference to cold shutdown and the safety systems warning came from the September statement.
Regarding radiation measurements taken before the incident, Energoatom said the gamma radiation dose rate around the plant remained within natural background levels from November 2 to 6. The measured rate was 0.1-0.3 microsieverts per hour, according to the measurement results announced by the company. These figures cover the days before the November 8 outage and do not describe radiation measurements after the loss of external power. The outage statement provided no subsequent radiation reading and did not report an accident. The available information gives no date for the line’s restoration; according to Energoatom, the plant remains dependent exclusively on diesel generators until external power returns.