Chernobyl power supply cut off, says IAEA

The development comes two weeks after Russian forces took control of the site, the agency’s director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said. He expressed concern at the news, as the ‘secure off-site power supply from the grid for all nuclear sites’ was one of seven indispensable pillars of nuclear safety and security outlined by him at a meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors on 2 March.

However, the director general said the IAEA agreed with the Ukrainian regulator that the disconnection would not have a critical impact on essential safety functions at the site, where radioactive waste management facilities are located.

The IAEA said that regarding the site’s spent fuel storage facility, the volume of cooling water in the pool is sufficient to maintain effective heat removal from the spent fuel without an electricity supply. The site also has reserve emergency power supplies with diesel generators and batteries.