Shelling disconnects Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from Ukraine grid

Until then, continued fighting puts the plant, and potentially much of Europe, at risk. A nuclear accident could spread radiation far across the continent.

The severing of that connection briefly caused a blackout in the Zaporizhzhia region, said Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-appointed governor for the area. Power has now been restored.

Disconnecting the plant from the grid is dangerous because it raises the risk of catastrophic failure of the electricity-run cooling systems for its reactors and spent fuel rods.

During the outage, the plant still received supplies of electricity from one remaining backup line connected to the nearby conventional power plant, Energoatom said. There were three of these lines before the war, but two have been cut.

If all external connections go down, it must rely on diesel-fuelled generators for power. If they break down, engineers only have 90 minutes to stave off dangerous overheating.

He called on the IAEA and other world bodies to act much faster to force Russian troops to leave the territory of the station.

The latest crisis at the plant, which has previously been threatened by fires, came as the death toll from a Russian rocket attack on a railway station and village in south-central Dnipropetrovsk region rose to 25.

Tetyana Kvitnytska, the deputy director of health at the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said four children were among the injured, three of whom were in a serious condition. She said there were shrapnel wounds, burns and fractures.

Only two pictures have been released so far of the railway carriages that were hit, which appear burnt out and flattened in places. Tymoshenko said five passenger carriages caught fire and a utility building at the railway station had been hit.