KYIV -- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has called on Russia to agree to a cease-fire to allow repairs to the decommissioned Chernobyl power plant, the site of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters, after it was fully cut off from the electrical grid, raising the risk of radiation leaks.
Ukraine's national energy company, Ukrenergo, said on March 9 that electricity to the plant was cut off due to a disruption of an electricity line connecting the Chernobyl nuclear plant with the electricity supplier in Kyiv.
The outage puts at risk some 20 tons of waste that must be constantly cooled to keep radiation leaking and potentially endangering "Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Europe."
"The entire power supply line of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and all its nuclear facilities controlled by the Russian Army has been damaged," Kuleba said on Twitter.
"Chernobyl has lost power. I call on the entire international community to immediately call on Russia to cease fire and allow repair crews to restore the electricity supply as soon as possible," he said, noting reserve diesel generators had a 48-hour capacity to power the plant, after which the cooling systems will stop, "making radiation leaks imminent."
The cause of the outage was not given, but during the launch of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the still-radioactive site, which lies some 100 kilometers from Kyiv, was taken over by Russian forces during a pitched battle in the area.
Since then, 210 Ukrainian personnel have been working at the nuclear plant without being rotated out for fresh workers.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on March 8 that Ukraine had informed it about the urgent need to rotate the nuclear plant's personnel.
"[Ukraine] asked the IAEA to lead the international support needed to prepare a plan for replacing the current personnel and for providing the facility with an effective rotation system," the IAEA said in a statement.
Last week, on March 4, Russian forces seized another nuclear power plant in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhya.
The plant at Zaporizhzhya, on the banks of a reservoir on the Dnieper River, is the largest in Europe and generates more than one-fifth of Ukraine's domestic electricity.
The UN's nuclear agency said on March 9 that it had lost touch with monitoring equipment at the plant in Zaporizhzhya, a day after it reported the same interruption at Chernobyl.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi "said he was concerned about the sudden interruption of such data flows to the IAEA's Vienna headquarters from the two sites, where large amounts of nuclear material are present in the form of spent or fresh nuclear fuel and other types of nuclear material," the IAEA said in a statement.
The fourth reactor at Chernobyl exploded in April 1986 during a botched safety test, sending clouds of radiation billowing across much of Europe.