The destruction of a major dam and power plant on the front lines of the war in Ukraine may dry up the rich agricultural region in the south, sweep pollutants into waterways and upend ecosystems around the massive reservoir now rapidly flooding downstream.
on the front lines of the war in Ukraine may dry up the rich agricultural region of southern Ukraine, sweep pollutants into waterways and upend ecosystems that had developed around the massive reservoir whose waters are now rapidly flooding downstream, although the full impact could take months or even years to understand, officials and experts said.
“People will not have drinking water or cooking water,” said Anna Ackermann, a board member of Ecoaction, one of Ukraine’s leading environmental civic organizations, who added that she was concerned above all else about the human impact of the dam’s destruction. “There will be no water to grow fields.”
“Dam breaks like this ultimately can release every hazardous material you can imagine. Everything gets washed away by the floodwater,” he said. “Mines are being moved and remobilized,” he said. “Presumably, the Ukrainian and Russian forces would have had maps of these minefields. Floodwater moves them and redistributes them.”
One of the authors of that study, Henrik Olander-Hjalmarsson, said in a statement that the actual event will probably cause more damage.“It appears the real-world scenario is worse than the one I modeled since the water levels in the reservoir were significantly higher than in the model,” he wrote in an email to journalists.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency said the facility is positioned to avoid a meltdown, as it has access to alternate pools of water that can keep the reactors and fuel rods cool for at least the next couple of months. Operations at the Soviet-era plant were largely dormant before the dam failure, experts said, which helped reduce the threat.
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