Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant lost its last remaining off-site line, the 330kV Ferosplavna-1, on 20 August after military activity north of the Dnipro, the 26th time the plant has lost off-site power since 2022. By 29 August the International Atomic Energy Agency reported roughly ten days of diesel left on site, the regulatory minimum, with the last off-site delivery almost six months earlier and a May delivery cancelled by fighting.
Conditions got worse before they got better. Staff cut the running emergency generators from four to two and began operating cooling pumps intermittently to stretch the fuel. Inspectors logged three drone impacts in one week: one near the cooling pond on 25 August that injured two plant employees, and two more on 26 August at the dry spent-fuel store and the sprinkler system.
A seventh IAEA-brokered local ceasefire took effect on 5 September so Ukrainian technicians could demine the ground and repair the line, and power came back around 8 September. Count what ending it cost rather than how long it lasted. Europe's largest nuclear site spent roughly nineteen days cooling six reactors' worth of spent fuel on two diesel generators, and the price of stopping that was a truce over one substation.
The plant's redundancy has been eroding all year. The 22nd loss came in July with the main line already down, the IAEA confirmed drone damage at the Enerhodar fire station the same month, and a drone killed the plant's chief engineer in July as well. Ferosplavna-1 now carries the whole plant on its own.
