Armenia’s nuclear power plant to resume work after lightning strike

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Armenia’s sole nuclear power plant, shut down on Friday for security reasons after a lightning strike, has been reconnected to the grid and will soon resume operations in full, Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing local authorities.

Several districts of the capital Yerevan and some other regions had suffered a blackout following the incident late on Friday, Interfax said.

The plant was hit at 9:55 p.m. (1755 GMT) on Friday and was disconnected from the grid, Interfax cited the ministry of territorial administration and infrastructure as saying.

“The reason (for the shutdown) was a lightning strike, which caused the station’s safety systems to switch to safe shutdown mode,” it said.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by William Mallard and Gareth Jones)