Ukrainian nuclear power plants have cut electricity generation as the power grid has been damaged, the country’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Friday.
“Substations that transmit electricity have been damaged, which caused production cuts at plants, first of all nuclear generating ones,” he said on Rada television.
Galushchenko evaded a question about whether Ukrainian nuclear plants were disconnected from the grid.
“We are now trying to connect nuclear plants to the system as soon as possible,” the minister said.
He added that about nine power generation plants had been damaged across the country, without saying which ones and where.
Air raid warnings were issued across Ukraine on Friday. The alert lasted more than four hours, with reports about explosions coming from some Ukrainian cities, including Kiev. Kirill Timoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, announced emergency power cuts throughout the country.
On November 23, all three nuclear power plants operating in Ukraine were disconnected from the country’s power grid. On that day, an air raid alert was announced throughout Ukraine, which lasted more than two hours. On December 13, the Energy Ministry said that all nine nuclear reactors controlled by Kiev were connected to the grid and were operating at full capacity.
As of the beginning of 2022, there were four active nuclear power plants in Ukraine, with 15 reactors that have a total installed capacity of 13.88 GW. Another nuclear power plant, Chernobyl, was decommissioned in 2000. Since March 2022, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, with six reactors, has been under the protection of the Russian military.
Source: Agencies
