Kyiv - The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to send a mission to visit the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant next week after the power to the plant was temporarily knocked offline and more shelling was reported in the area overnight, Ukrainian officials said Friday.

A transmission line was damaged by fire causing a blackout at Europe’s largest nuclear plant and across the region on Thursday, bringing fears of a catastrophe in a country still haunted by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Lana Zerkal, an adviser to Ukraine’s energy minister, told Ukrainian media on Thursday evening that logistical issues are being worked out for the IAEA team to come to the Zaporizhzhia plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces and run by Ukrainian workers since the early days of the 6-month-old war.

Ukrainian officials said an area close to the plant came under a barrage of shelling overnight and that an armed conflict near a working atomic plant could cause more serious damage, even as Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are protected by reinforced concrete containment domes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the plant’s emergency backup diesel generators was activated to supply power needed to run the plant to avoid a catastrophe. Zaporizhzhia’s Russian-installed regional governor, Yevgeny Balitsky, blamed the transmission-line damage on a Ukrainian attack.

Nuclear experts have long warned of the risk of damage to the plant's spent nuclear fuel pools or its reactors. Cuts in power needed to cool the pools could cause a disastrous meltdown.

Elsewhere, two people were killed and six more injured over the past 24 hours in the eastern Donetsk region, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said Friday. In the northeastern Sumy region, on the border with Russia, more than 100 munitions were fired over the past 24 hours, burning down a house, governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky said.
-AP/Reuters