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Russian officials said Friday that debris from Ukrainian drones struck the Novovoronezh nuclear power plant, briefly forcing the facility to reduce output after the attack was intercepted.
Rosatom chief Alexey Likhachev said about eight drones were launched toward the plant late Wednesday, all of which were shot down.
“Debris fell and damaged the main switchgear,” he told reporters after meeting International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi in Kaliningrad.
Likhachev said three units at the station were disconnected from the grid as a precaution to prevent further incidents, adding that repairs were completed quickly and the plant returned to normal capacity by Thursday morning.
He noted that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had faced heavy attacks between Sept. 23 and Oct. 23, leaving it reliant on external power sources for a month.
He said Rosatom and the IAEA had worked together to stabilize the situation and maintain safety at the site.
Likhachev also discussed ongoing consultations with Grossi on the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Türkiye, as well as Rosatom projects in Egypt and Bangladesh.
Grossi said plans in the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing were a development that “cannot be ignored,” while noting there were no indications such tests had begun.
He said the Akkuyu project and other international nuclear initiatives made cooperation with Rosatom increasingly important.
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