Cooling Systems To Operate Normally As Ukraine’s Retired Chernobyl Nuclear Power Electricity Is Restored

Electricity supply has been restored at Ukraine’s retired Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was seized by Russian forces in the first days of the invasion, energy officials in Kyiv said Sunday.

The restoration of power at the decommissioned site means that cooling systems will now operate normally and not have to use backup power.

Ukraine’s nuclear company Energoatom had earlier warned that radioactive substances could be released if a high-voltage power line to the plant were not repaired after it was damaged in fighting.

‘Today, thanks to the incredible efforts of Ukrainian energy specialists, our nuclear power engineers and electricians managed to return the power supply to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was seized by the Russian occupiers,’ Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in a statement.

‘Our Ukrainian energy engineers, by risking their own health and lives, were able to avert the risk of a possible nuclear catastrophe that threatened the whole of Europe,’ he added.

On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine and seized the defunct Chernobyl plant, site of a 1986 disaster that killed hundreds and spread radioactive contamination west across Europe.

WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE 1986 CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER?
On April 26, 1986 a power station on the outskirts of Pripyat suffered a massive accident in which one of the reactors caught fire and exploded, spreading radioactive material into the surroundings.

More than 160,000 residents of the town and surrounding areas had to be evacuated and have been unable to return, leaving the former Soviet site as a radioactive ghost town.