Russia's nuclear energy operator, Rosenergoatom, says a unit of the Rostov nuclear power plant whose disconnection left some 1 million people in southern Russia and parts of occupied Crimea without electricity was switched off due to "a false alarm."
Major power grid failures and sweeping power outages occurred in the south of Russia and Crimea on July 16 after the emergency shutdown of the unit, which Rosenergoatom said happened when a "protection mechanism was triggered."
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The company did not specify what had caused the activation of the protection mechanism.
But in a statement on Telegram on July 17, Rosenergoatom said that Unit N1 had been shut down on July 16 "due to a false alarm."
The largest cities in southern Russia -- Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog, Elista, Anapa, Armavir, Gelendzhik, Novorossiisk, and Stavropol -- were among the areas affected, with Novaya gazeta reporting that some 1 million people were left without electricity simultaneously in several southern regions of Russia and parts of Ukraine's Crimea region.
Rosenergoatom did not elaborate on the causes of the the "false alarm."
The Rostov nuclear power plant, also known as the Volgodonsk nuclear power plant, has four units with a total capacity of more than 4,000 megawatts. The plant is located on the left bank of the Don River near the city of Volgodonsk, some 1,100 kilometers south of Moscow.
In recent months, Ukraine, whose energy infrastructure has been relentlessly pummeled by Russian strikes since the start of Moscow's unprovoked invasion, has in turn resorted to targeting Russian energy facilities, mainly oil refineries and those that work for the Russian military.
In Crimea, occupation authorities meanwhile blamed the rolling blackouts on a heat wave in the region.
In Sevastopol, Crimea's largest city, with a population on nearly 400,000 people, Russian-installed Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev on July 17 announced rolling blackouts every two hours in different neighborhoods of the city, blaming the restrictions on the disconnected unit of the Rostov nuclear power plant.
Trolleybuses, a main means of public transportation, have stopped working in the city as a result of the power blackouts.