IAEA brokers Zaporizhzhia truce to repair power line

IAEA has brokered a localized ceasefire around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) to repair a critical external power line. The IAEA said cooling at the plant cannot be sustained without outside electricity, making power-line outages a safety and operational risk. The target is the 750 kV Dniprovska power line, which supplies the plant’s external electricity. All six reactors at ZNPP have been offline for over three years since Russia seized the site in early 2022. Although the plant is “offline,” spent fuel remains in cooling pools and requires continuous power to run pumps and maintain safe temperatures. The repair effort involves technicians from both Russia and Ukraine and requires demining work before infrastructure can be approached. The agreement also faced security complications: Rosatom reported that a Ukrainian drone strike injured engineers near the facility around the time the ceasefire began. The IAEA, led by Director General Rafael Grossi, has maintained a continuous presence at the plant since September 2022. Prior to this latest round, ZNPP had experienced repeated complete losses of external power, forcing reliance on emergency diesel generators. Market relevance: with ZNPP still offline, Europe effectively loses about 5.7 GW of nuclear capacity from its energy mix. This can matter for power prices and broader risk sentiment, but the agreement itself is a narrowly scoped, localized ceasefire focused on restoring external electricity for cooling.