Belarus is supplying electricity to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Belarusian authorities have said, after the facility, which is under the control of Russian forces, lost power.
The Belarusian Energy Ministry said in a statement published on the Telegram page of the Homel region that the electrical supply to the decommissioned plant "is completely restored."
Radiation around the power plant, site of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters, remain at normal levels, the ministry statement said, citing local monitors.
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It added that the electricity was being provided from the Belarusian power grid.
The plant needs electricity to power cooling systems for the spent nuclear-fuel-storage facility, among other systems.
Power to the plant was knocked out on March 14 for the second time, according to Ukrainian authorities, after Russian forces damaged a power line.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said later that day it had been informed that external power had been restored and that work was under way to reconnect the facility to the grid.
Ukraine's state-owned grid operator, Ukrenergo, said then that the Chernobyl plant relied on electricity from diesel generators, and that the IAEA had been informed of the situation.
The station is located north of Kyiv and close to the Belarusian border. Its nuclear reactors are enclosed in a giant steel and concrete sarcophagus and are not operating. Russian forces took over the facility shortly after it began its invasion on February 24.
Ukrenergo said one of the earlier outages was due to a disruption of an electricity line connecting Chernobyl with an electricity supplier in Kyiv.
The outage put at risk some 20 tons of waste that must be constantly cooled to keep radiation from leaking and potentially endangering "Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Europe," Ukrenergo said.
But the IAEA said earlier this month that given the time that has passed since the accident in 1986, the heat load and the volume of the cooling pools were "sufficient for effective heat removal without need for electrical supply."