Operation of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Slovakia, a Ukrainian city in the aftermath of a Russian bombardment

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine has restored some power, U.N. nuclear watchdog officials announced. It comes amid fears that total electricity loss would cause a nuclear accident.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called the restoration of power “a temporary relief in a still untenable situation.”

The Ukrainian government has tried using the plant’s own reactor and backup generators for power, but they are not sustainable.

The six-reactor plant is the largest in Europe. It’s been captured and occupied by Russian forces since March, though some Ukrainian workers still operate the plant. One of four Ukrainian territories that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month is the city.

Efforts to prevent a radiation disaster have also been stymied by the fact that the city has repeatedly been a target of Russian blasts. That has left the plant vulnerable to other factors as well as local residents who rely on electricity.

There is a forest of wind farms on both sides of the highway near Vienna. At the border with Slovakia, they stop. Slovakia gets only 0.4 percent of its energy from wind and solar. Instead it is betting its energy transition on nuclear power.

At the center of Slovakia’s nuclear strategy is the Mochovce power plant, an orange and red building flanked by eight giant cooling chimneys. The village was relocated by the Soviet Union in order to make room for the power plant. There is a small church that is all that’s left. Cars are sliding in and out of the security gate, as the cooling chimneys emit water into the sky. Workers are preparing a new reactor that is going to launch in the early twentieth century. The 431-megawatt unit that spent many years mired in controversy is expected to cover 13 percent of the country’s electricity needs, according to Branislav Strek, the CEO of Slovenské Elektrrne. Slovakia will reach that mark as European neighbors scramble for energy supplies after severing ties with Russia.

Without Russian gas, Europe has been racing to avoid blackouts. Every day, Paris is turning off the Eiffel Tower’s lights an hour early, Cologne has dimmed its street lights, and Switzerland is considering a ban on electric cars. Nuclear power advocates, like Strýček, are using this moment to argue that Europe needs nuclear technology to keep the lights on without jeopardizing net-zero targets. At the World Utilities Congress in June he said that it provides an immense amount of stable baseload which renewables aren’t able to provide.