Dam blast sparks flooding, nuke concerns

Ukraine yesterday accused Russian forces of blowing up a major dam and hydroelectric power station in southern Ukraine that Moscow controls, sending water gushing from the breached facility and threatening what officials called an "ecological disaster" due to possible massive flooding. Officials from both sides in the war ordered hundreds of thousands of residents downriver to evacuate.

Russian officials claimed the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro river was damaged by Ukrainian military strikes.

The fallout could have broad consequences: flooding homes, streets and businesses downstream; depleting water levels upstream that help cool Europe's largest nuclear power plant; and draining supplies of drinking water to the south in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed.

The break added a complex new element to Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month. Ukrainian forces were widely seen to be moving forward with a long-anticipated counteroffensive in patches along more than 1,000 kilometers of frontline in the east and south of Ukraine.

Ukraine's nuclear operator Energoatom said the blowing up "could have consequences" for Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe's biggest, but wrote that for now the situation is "controllable."

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency said there was "no immediate nuclear safety risk."

Ukraine has warned the dam's failure could unleash 18 million cubic meters of water and flood Kherson and dozens of other areas where hundreds of thousands of people live.

A Ukrainian NGO estimated that nearly 100 villages and towns would be flooded. It also reckoned the water level would start dropping only after five to seven days.

A total collapse would wash away much of the left while a severe drop in the reservoir has the potential to deprive the nuclear plant of crucial cooling, as well as dry up water supply in northern Crimea.

Online videos began testifying to the spillover. One showed floodwaters inundating a long roadway.

Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnipro, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is crucial for the entire country's drinking water and power supply.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called an emergency meeting.

Footage from what appeared to be a camera overlooking the dam that was circulating on social media purported to show a flash, explosion and breakage of the dam.