Nuclear meltdown fears erupt as Europe's largest plant 'loses all off-site power'

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe and one of the 10 largest in the world, lost all off-site power overnight, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog said. Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), added that this marks the eleventh time such an incident has occurred since the full-scale war began in February 2022.

IAEA wrote on X this morning that the outage had spanned half an hour. The tweet read: "Ukraine’s ZNPP temporarily lost all off-site power overnight, 11th time during military conflict, IAEA DG @rafaelmgrossi said. ZNPP reconnected to 330 kV power line after half hour outage, but 750 kV line still disconnected."

It comes after Russia unleashed one of its largest aerial attacks on Ukraine overnight since the beginning of the war. In the massive missile and drone barrage, Russia used 653 drones and 51 missiles.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its air defenses had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight into Saturday.

Ukraine's air force said Saturday morning that the incident set off air-raid sirens nationwide and occurred as Ukraine was observing Armed Forces Day.

Vitaliy Zaichenko, head of Ukraine’s state grid operator Ukrenergo, told the Kyiv Independent the attack was "quite severe" for Ukraine's power system.

"Other nuclear power plants are now operating below their full capacity for safety reasons," he added.

Strikes also targeted thermal power plants operated by DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company.

Although the company did not identify the specific plants for security reasons, it said that power-generation equipment had been “seriously damaged.”

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its air defenses had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight into Saturday.

During the talks, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine's national security council, "agreed on the framework of security arrangements" that could accompany a peace agreement and "discussed necessary deterrence to sustain a lasting peace", the statement said.