Kyiv Planning for Total Evacuation if It Loses Electricity
NY Times ^ | November 5, 2022 | Marc Santora and Ben HubbardPosted on 11/5/2022, 7:58:03 PM by McGruff
As they struggle to maintain an electricity grid heavily damaged by Russian missiles, officials in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, say they have begun planning for a once unthinkable possibility: a complete blackout that would require the evacuation of the city’s approximately three million remaining residents.
The situation is already so dire, with 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure damaged or destroyed, that municipal workers are setting up 1,000 heating shelters that can double as bunkers while engineers try to fix bombed-out power stations without the needed equipment.
To try to keep the grid from failing altogether, Ukraine’s national energy utility said on Saturday that it would continue to impose rolling blackouts in seven regions.
INFORMATION:
EXTERNAL POWER HAS BEEN RESTORED TO UKRAINE’S ZAPORIZHZHIA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT (ZNPP) two days after it lost all access to off-site electricity due to Russia’s shelling.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said this in a statement, Ukrinform reports.
It is noted that on Friday, at around 22:00, the 750 kV power supply to all six units of the ZNPP had been re-established, and the eight operating emergency diesel generators turned off and put into standby mode.
The 750 kV line is therefore now once again providing the electricity the ZNPP’s six reactors need for cooling and other essential nuclear safety and security functions.
Read also: More than half a hundred enemy strikes launched on Zaporizhzhia region
According to the IAEA, there is no change in the operational status of all units. Units 5 and 6 are in semi-hot shutdown providing steam to the site and arrangements are being made to further heat-up both units to a hot shutdown state. The other four units remain in cold shutdown.
“The repeated power outages all too clearly demonstrate the extremely serious nuclear safety and security situation this major nuclear power plant is facing. So far, the brave staff of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have always managed to maintain the safe operation of the six units. But it can’t go on like this. I have repeatedly called for the urgent establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to prevent a nuclear accident. We can’t afford to lose any more time. We must act before it is too late,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said.
As reported by Ukrinform, on November 2, Zaporizhzhia NPP was completely de-energized due to enemy shelling.