Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Enters Second Week Without Outside Power, IAEA Says 10 Days of Diesel Left

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine has gone more than a week without off-site electricity and is running entirely on emergency diesel generators, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday, August 29.

The plant needs power to keep its six shut-down reactors cool. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said the facility has roughly 10 days of diesel fuel on site as of the agency's statement.

"The availability of diesel fuel is of paramount importance whenever a nuclear power plant loses off-site power," Grossi said. "The current situation once again shows why reliable external power and secure supply routes are indispensable for nuclear safety and security."

Fuel running low, deliveries thin

The plant hasn't received a diesel shipment to its off-site storage facility in about six months, according to the IAEA. It did get emergency deliveries from another off-site location on Aug. 26 and 27, according to The Straits Times' reporting on the IAEA statement.

That buys time. The IAEA said the plant lost its regular power supply "following military activity on the northern side of the Dnipro River," the waterway that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in the area. The agency is now trying to negotiate a local ceasefire just to let repair crews fix the damaged electrical lines.

This isn't a new crisis for the site. Ukraine's deputy head of military law enforcement, Gyunduz Mamedov, wrote on X that this marks the 27th blackout at the plant since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, according to Al Jazeera.

Drones keep hitting the plant, but nobody's naming a culprit in these reports

On Friday, August 28, the IAEA said three separate drone incidents had struck the plant that week, injuring two employees. Al Jazeera reported plainly that the IAEA "did not say who launched the drones."

Russia has controlled the plant since seizing it in March 2022, weeks after the invasion started. Both Moscow and Kyiv routinely blame each other for strikes on the facility, and none of the reporting reviewed here contains an IAEA attribution for this week's specific drone incidents.

Earlier this month, a separate drone strike near the plant killed one nuclear specialist and wounded 17 others, with Moscow blaming Kyiv for that attack, according to Al Jazeera. Ukraine has not been quoted in these reports accepting responsibility for that strike, and no independent verification of Moscow's claim appears in the sourcing reviewed here. Given the plant sits directly on the front line, and given both militaries have obvious incentives to shift blame, treating either side's claim as established fact would be a mistake.

A plant that hasn't made power in years, but still needs it

Zaporizhzhia is Europe's largest nuclear power station. It hasn't generated electricity since September 2022, over six months after Russia's invasion began, and all six reactors have been shut down since then, according to Al Jazeera and Channel NewsAsia.

A shut-down reactor still needs continuous cooling to prevent the fuel inside from overheating. That's why off-site power, or a reliable diesel backup, isn't optional. It's the only thing standing between routine maintenance and an actual meltdown risk.

The IAEA has kept a permanent team on site since September 2022, monitoring conditions plant staff can't fully control given the ongoing fighting around it.

The bigger picture around it

The power outage isn't happening in isolation. The Guardian reported that Ukrainian prosecutors have opened an investigation into a Russian strike on a military munitions warehouse in Myla, near Kyiv's Bucha district, that killed at least 37 people on Friday, August 28, making it the deadliest single attack of the year according to the outlet. The Guardian also reported Germany is preparing sanctions against Russian entities over a suspected drone incident at Leipzig airport, expected within the week according to Politico's reporting cited by the Guardian.

Neither of those events is tied by any source to the Zaporizhzhia power loss. They're separate developments in the same war, not a single cause-and-effect story, and treating them as connected would be reading in a link the reporting doesn't support.

The unresolved question sitting at the plant itself is simple and urgent: will the IAEA get its local ceasefire to repair the power lines before the 10-day diesel clock runs out, and if not, what happens to a plant with six reactors that still need cooling and no reliable source of electricity to provide it.