The last reactor of six at Zaporizhzhia has been taken offline as Ukraine's blitz flows around it, and the Russians respond with more shelling. A village across the river from the plant was shelled six times last night. Eventually one of these projectiles will go astray and hit one of the containment buildings. So Ukraine operators prudently began putting the last reactor #6 into cold shut-down mode. That status is least likely to produce a catastrophic release of radiation should the building suffer a direct hit.
Energoatom, the plant operator, restored electric power to the plant on Saturday to allow the shut down to take place. Ironically, the huge generation station requires a grid connection to operate its reactor cooling system. It operated in stand alone mode for several days using its emergency diesel generators. That is not the safest option since the station only has ten days of fuel reserves. Zaporizhzhia is one of the ten biggest nuclear generation facilities in the world, and the biggest in Europe. International energy experts have appealed to Russia to declare a demilitarized zone around the plant, which it has so far refused to do. The military situation around the plant may get worse as Ukraine stretches its highly successful counter-offensive to its maximum logistical extent. [photo credit: AP]
IAEA said that it would take thirty hours to achieve a cold shut-down, but the reactors will still need power to operate safety systems. French President Macron urged Putin in a phone call to withdraw troops and weapons from the facility on Sunday.