The plant requires power to run the reactors’ vital cooling systems. A loss of cooling could lead to a nuclear meltdown.

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Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s transmission system operator, reported Friday that two damaged main lines supplying the plant with electricity had resumed operation, ensuring a stable power supply.

The country’s nuclear power agency, Energoatom, said the plant had been reconnected to the grid and was producing electricity “for Ukraine’s needs”.

“The nuclear workers of Zaporizhzhia power plant are real heroes! They tirelessly and firmly uphold the nuclear and radiation safety of Ukraine and the whole of Europe on their shoulders,” the agency said in a statement.

Russia-installed officials in the Zaporizhzhia region, however, said that the plant was supplying electricity only to Russia-controlled areas of the country and not the rest of Ukraine.

Concerns about the site have reverberated across Europe.

French President Emmanuel Macron said a visit by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency should be allowed to take place “very quickly,” warning: “Civilian nuclear power must not be an instrument of war.”

Lana Zerkal, an adviser to Ukraine’s energy minister, told Ukrainian media that the logistics for an IAEA visit were still being worked out. Zerkal accused Russia of trying to sabotage the visit.

Ukraine has claimed Russia is using the plant as a shield by storing weapons there and launching attacks from around it. Moscow, for its part, accuses Ukraine of recklessly firing on the place.

Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are protected by thick, reinforced concrete containment domes that experts say can withstand an errant artillery shell. Many of the fears centre instead on a possible loss of the cooling system, and also the risk that an attack on the cooling ponds where spent fuel rods are kept could scatter radioactive material.

Continued Russian shelling of Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia plant, damaged 10 houses, a school and a health care facility but caused no injuries, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

AP

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