IAEA Update 346, published on 10 April, disclosed that the main 750 kV Dniprovska power line feeding the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has been disconnected for eighteen days, with no sixth repair ceasefire brokered1. The plant is running on its sole remaining backup, the 330 kV Ferosplavna-1 line, which was reconnected on 5 March under the fifth IAEA-brokered local ceasefire. Director General Rafael Grossi stated the damage to the Dniprovska line is "located over the Dnipro River, which is the frontline in this area."
A further hit to the Ferosplavna-1 line, from artillery, a drone, or incidental damage along the Dnipro River frontline, would push all six reactor units onto emergency diesel generators with finite fuel. Rosatom has separately confirmed none of the units can be restarted while fighting continues. The redundancy posture echoes the pre-accident configuration at Fukushima Daiichi in March 2011, though ZNPP's shut-down condition and cooler fuel materially reduce the comparable risk.
Russia's Rostekhnadzor issued ten-year operating licences for units 1 and 2 on 2 April, a bureaucratic signal that Moscow intends to keep the plant under Russian administration for a decade regardless of any negotiated outcome. Wire services have not carried this. The quiet three-week disconnection is the kind of fact that does not move until it fails.
