He offered to resign, but his resignation was torn up by his Party-appointed supervisor from the Energy Ministry in July 1972. On 1 August 1977, two years later than planned and more than seven years after the planning and the construction of the plant was launched, the first reactor of the Chernobyl Power Plant went online. At 8:10pm on 27 September the same year, Ukraine's first nuclear electricity ran across 110 and 330 kilovolt lines and on to the Soviet power grid.