Amid shelling, Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant taken partly offline

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said Saturday that the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine was disconnected to its last external power line, but was still able to run electricity through a reserve line amid sustained shelling in the area.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi said in a statement that the agency's experts, who arrived at Zaporizhzhia, were told by senior Ukrainian staff that the fourth and last operational line was down.

The three others were lost earlier during the conflict. But the IAEA experts learned that the reserve line linking the facility to a nearby thermal power plant was delivering the electricity the plant generates to the external grid.

Inspectors from the IAEA are used to risky missions—from the radioactive aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan to the politically charged Iranian nuclear program. 

But their deployment amid the war in Ukraine to Zaporizhzhia takes the threat to a new level and underscores the lengths to which the organization will go in attempts to avert a potentially catastrophic nuclear disaster.

The six-month war sparked by Russia's invasion of its western neighbour is forcing international organizations, not just the IAEA, to deploy teams during active hostilities in their efforts to impose order around Ukraine's nuclear power plants, pursue accountability for war crimes and identify the dead.

This is not the first time that an IAEA team has gone into a situation of armed hostilities, said Tariq Rauf, the organization's former head of verification and security, noting that the IAEA sent inspectors to Iraq in 2003 and to former Soviet Republic Georgia during fighting.

Speaking to reporters after leaving colleagues inside, he said the agency was not moving from the plant from now on, and vowed a continued presence of agency experts. But it remains to be seen what exactly the organisation can accomplish.