“New satellite imagery confirms that the Kakhovka Reservoir no longer exists. Only the Dnieper River itself, several tributaries and several small lakes in the area remain, ”writes OSINT blogger WarMapper, publishing satellite images of the reservoir from the Copernicus Sentinel service.
The head of the administration of the Nikopol district, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, said earlier that due to the shallowing of the Kakhovka reservoir, most of the Nikopol district of the Dnipropetrovsk region may be left without tap water.
In addition, the shallowing of the Kakhovka reservoir may have consequences for the Zaporizhzhya NPP, and more precisely for the cooling of the reactors. On June 6, Energoatom released a statement saying that "the explosion of the Kakhovskaya HPP could have negative consequences for ZNPP, but the situation is under control."
“Due to the explosion, the water level in the Kakhovka reservoir is rapidly decreasing, which is an additional threat to the temporarily occupied Zaporozhye nuclear power plant,” the statement said. “Water from the Kakhovka Reservoir is necessary for the station to receive make-up for turbine condensers and ZNPP safety systems. Now the station cooling pond is full: as of 8:00 am, the water level is 16.6 meters, which is enough for the needs of the station.”
At the same time, nuclear physicist Andrey Ozharovsky explained that the ZNPP does not yet need a large amount of water, and it is still difficult to assess the danger in the future.
“Now the station is in shutdown mode, without power generation. The reactors are not on power, which means that water requirements are minimal. This is the first factor that reduces the risk. The second factor is that the reservoir cooler is nevertheless separated from the Kakhovka reservoir by a dam, and if we assume that in a few days or weeks the Kakhovskoye reservoir will completely descend, there will still be water in the reservoir of the cooler, it will gradually, perhaps, evaporate, go down. In the long term, we need to calculate this, look at the dynamics of this cooling reservoir. Very often there are additional sources of recharge: streams, small rivers.