What will happen to Kherson if Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station is attacked?

Water supplies via the North Crimean Canal will stop should the dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station (HPP) is attacked and blown up, the head of the Novokahovsky administrative district of the Kherson region Vladimir Leontiev said, TASS reports.

"If the hydroelectric power station bursts, the North Crimean Canal and Crimea too will remain without water for many years to come, until restored,” Leontiev said.

On October 19, Volodymyr Saldo, Acting Governor of the Kherson region, said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) continued striking the locks of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station in order to flood the territories down the Dnieper.

Earlier it was also reported that due to the danger of the attack on the dam at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station, they began to dump water from the reservoir. Kherson will not suffer, but the flood waters may affect private houses.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces of Ukraine may indeed destroy the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station. This explains the evacuation of Kherson residents beyond the left bank of the Dnieper River.

According to experts' estimates, it will be difficult to destroy the dam completely. In order to do this, one needs to blow up all 28 spans. Even in this case, the impact will cause only the section to collapse along a length of about 450 meters.

About 94 kilometers of territory along the Dnieper will be flooded. Kherson districts will be 1-1.5 meters under the water. The Kakhovka reservoir holds 18 cubic kilometers of water. If the dam is destroyed, the water will flow for about three days, and the water level will only be rising continuously for 14 hours, Mash Telegram channel said.

The wave height will be 4.8 meters, the overflow width will be 5 kilometers, the wave speed will be about 24.4 kilometers per hour. All this may interrupt water supplies, cool the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and cause many coastal structures to collapse.