The Russian army does not retaliate against Ukraine's nuclear power plants, but restricts their work by destroying substations through which nuclear power plants supply electricity to the power grid.
The IAEA reports that with a retaliatory strike on October 30, the Russian army damaged substations through which Ukrainian nuclear power plants supply electricity to the power grid.
Thus, the IAEA groups at the South Ukrainian and Khmelnitsky nuclear power plants reported that each of the stations had lost access to one of its off-site power transmission lines.
"In addition, the IAEA team at the Rivne NPP reported that the station had reduced the capacity of two of its four units at the request of the network operator," the agency said in a statement.
The total capacity of Ukrainian nuclear power plants is slightly less than 8 GW, and the stations serve as the main source of electricity for the country.
As EADaily reported, on October 31, power outages are going on all over Ukraine. Even imports from the EU do not save the country, as it has to share the limits of the European operator with Moldova.
In the second half of October, the Russian army launched massive retaliatory strikes on the Ukrainian energy system, but a day ago Ukraine did not need huge volumes of imports. Retaliatory strikes fell not only on power plants, but also substations in the center and in the east of the country, and, in fact, left-bank Ukraine was almost cut off from imports.
At the same time, Western Ukraine experienced an overabundance, as imports are coming there and there are two nuclear power plants and many thermal power plants. However, on October 30, the situation changed dramatically. Retaliatory strikes by the Russian army damaged three thermal power plants and one thermal power plant already in Western Ukraine. The damage was confirmed at DTEK.