IAEA experts present at Ukraine’s Khmelnitsky, Rivne and South Ukraine NPPs and the Chornobyl site reported that nuclear safety and security is being maintained despite the effects of the ongoing conflict. The teams continued to report air raid alarms heard from the sites.
One of the three reactor units at the South Ukraine NPP has completed its planned maintenance and refuelling activities and was successfully restarted, while a planned outage at another unit is nearing completion, IAEA noted.
Earlier, however, the IAEA team at the South Ukraine NPP reported that its unit 2 was temporarily shut down following the actuation of electrical protections due to a transformer problem in the 330 kV open switchyard, located outside the NPP site. As a result of a short circuit, there was damage to the ceramic insulator, causing an oil leak that caught fire due to an electric arc. After the electrical connection was restored, the reactor was restarted and commenced supplying electricity to the grid after about 17 hours, reaching full power just over 24 hours after the shutdown.
The Ukrainian national energy company Ukrenergo confirmed the incident in its response to a request made by a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), Yaroslav Zheleznyak. The text of the response was published on Zheleznyak’s Telegram channel. Ukrenenergo said that, as a result of the event transformers were damaged, which led to the destruction of the input-distribution device. As a result, unit 1 of the NPP was turned off, as well as three power lines. A short circuit in measuring system of one transformer transformer followed by its destruction and fire, the report said.
“In order to avoid the risk of further development of the Ukrenergo team system accident, emergency measures were taken to limit energy consumption by disconnecting consumers in Kharkov, Sumy, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovograd regions, Ukrenergo said.
Zheleznyak’s request for information from Ukrenenego was prompted after Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko had said that reports about transformers at the South Ukraine NPP catching fire was false and a Russian narrative. “Then it made its way into the Ukrainian media space. But it’s not true; the power grid is functioning,” Halushchenko said.
Oleksandr Kharchenko, Director of the Energy Research Centre, had also reported the incident and temporary power outage. South Ukraine comprises three VVER-1000 reactor units.
