MOSCOW / KYIV — Power has been restored to the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, hours after the plant lost its external electricity supply on Sunday, November 8, and had to use backup generators for reactor cooling, the UN's nuclear watchdog said, Reuters reported.

Source: Reuters via SRN News, Nov 8, 2026

Zaporizhzhia, which does not produce electricity but needs power supplied by external links to keep its nuclear fuel cool, lost its off-site supply earlier on Sunday after the Ferosplavna power line disconnected, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. The agency said the cause and location of the disconnection were not known.

What each side said during the blackout

The plant's Russian-installed management said the Ferosplavna line had been shut down by “automatic protection” after damage, and that radiation levels on the site and in the surveillance zone were normal, Reuters reported. Ukraine's state nuclear operator Energoatom warned that operating in blackout mode creates a direct risk of failure of life-support systems and nuclear fuel cooling if diesel generators break down or exhaust their fuel, and counted Sunday's outage as the plant's 16th complete loss of external power this year — a different count from the IAEA's 27 incidents since the war began, because the two bodies are counting over different periods.

All six of the plant's reactors are shut down, but spent and core fuel still needs continuous cooling, and cooling needs electricity — which is why every loss of the external lines, even one repaired within hours, is treated by the IAEA as a serious nuclear-safety event.

A line that has failed again and again

The IAEA said on October 23 that the plant's main Dniprovska power line remained unavailable, leaving Ferosplavna as the working link. In early September, a local ceasefire brokered by the IAEA took effect to allow repairs to restore external power to Zaporizhzhia, which at that time had been without it since August 20, Reuters reported. Russia seized the plant, Europe's largest with six reactors, in the first weeks of the war that began with Moscow's February 2022 invasion, and Moscow and Kyiv have since regularly accused each other of military action that compromises nuclear safety — accusations each side denies as they apply to itself.

What happens next: the IAEA has repeatedly said the plant needs its grid connection restored durably and its diesel reserves increased, because backup generators are designed for hours and days, not sustained operation. Whether the Dniprovska line — unavailable since at least October 23 — is also repaired, and how long Sunday's restoration holds, will decide whether this remains a short scare or the start of another long blackout at Europe's largest nuclear plant.