A blast on June 6, 2023, destroyed the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River in eastern Ukraine. The rupture lowered water levels in a reservoir upriver at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar. The reservoir supplies water necessary for cooling the plant’s shutdown reactors and spent fuel, which is uranium that has been largely but not completely depleted by the fission reaction that drives nuclear power plants.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has inspectors on-site to monitor effects of the war at the plant, issued a statement saying that there was no imminent danger. Nevertheless, the destruction of the dam increases the risk of a disaster at the plant, a risk already heightened by ongoing combat in the area.
