SEVASTOPOL, October 21. /TASS/. A shallow Kakhovka reservoir resulting from damage to the local hydropower plant (HPP) won’t unleash a nuclear disaster at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP) but its recommissioning will require restoring the water levels, Yury Braslavsky, associate professor at the nuclear energy systems chair of Sevastopol State University, told TASS on Friday.

The Kakhovka HPP is part of a cascade of Dnieper hydropower stations. The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is situated on the shore of the Kakhovka reservoir upstream of the Dnieper River. Commander of Russia’s Integrated Group of Forces in Ukraine, Army General Sergey Surovikin, said on October 18 that the Russian troops had information about the Kiev regime plotting a massive rocket strike on the Kakhovka hydropower plant’s dam.

"This [the shallowing of the Kakhovka reservoir] does not pose a threat to the ZNPP in its current condition. Water from the reservoir is used to cool the turbine units, not the reactors. But now all the reactors have been shut down and, therefore, the turbines also are not functioning and thus cooling water is not required in such amounts," Braslavsky explained.

The canal of the Vodyansky Kovsh bay artificially created for supplying the Zaporozhye plant with water from the reservoir won’t help resolve the problem either, he specified.

"From the standpoint of nuclear safety, the threat [of the reservoir becoming shallow] does not exist. However, from the standpoint of the possibility of recommissioning the Zaporozhye NPP, this damage is critical because the entire power unit cannot operate fully without cooling water either at a nuclear power plant or at any other electric power station," he added.

The Zaporozhye nuclear plant is the largest in Europe and has a capacity of about 6,000 MW. It used to generate a quarter of all electric power in Ukraine. The Zaporozhye station consists of six power units and since 1996 it has operated as a detached unit of the Energoatom national nuclear power generating company controlled by Kiev.

In March 2022, the Zaporozhye NPP was placed under the Russian army’s control.