Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

• Crops in fields and orchards in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia region were inundated, then left to shrivel after the water drained.
• We are a U.S. political scientist with research expertise on the post-Soviet region and a Ukrainian economist who studies agriculture.
• While the long-term effects of the dam break are difficult to calculate, we believe that it will have a lasting impact on the climate of southern Ukraine.
• Agricultural production could be reduced for years to come, with impacts that ripple through supply chains and affect food security around the world.

A fertile farming region

• Local villages and towns came to depend on water and electricity from the dam and its reservoir.
• Some 545,000 acres (220,000 hectares) of arable land in these two regions are irrigated, including over 20% of Kherson’s farmland.

Flooded fields, toxic water

• Valuable perennial crops that relied on irrigation infrastructure fed by the reservoir will be flooded and then parched.
• Farther downstream, the lower Dnieper, Southern Bug and Inhulets river basins have been polluted, imperiling agriculture and drinking water for southern Ukraine.
• During the dam breach, 150 tons of oil leaked out, and at least 17 gas stations have been flooded.

After the flood, water shortages

• Most importantly, without water from the reservoir, the fields of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea will dry out.
• Coastal towns on the Sea of Azov, most importantly Berdyansk, have lost their main source of drinking water.
• Without the Kakhovka Reservoir, however, Crimea is unlikely to receive irrigation water for at least a decade.

Fewer exports, higher prices

• Southern Ukraine’s sunflower seeds, soy and cereals are major ingredients for industrially processed foods and livestock feed.
• They provide the proteins and lipids that are the building blocks of the 21st-century diet.
• Global food commodity prices shot up hours after the dam broke, as global grain traders anticipated food commodity shortages.
• And so what we are going to see is a huge impact on global food security.”

An uncertain future

• Loss of the Kakhovka Dam is the latest blow to a region that has suffered heavily during the war.
• NASA satellite images show crops planted in 2022 that were never harvested.
• In 1941, Joseph Stalin ordered Soviet troops to destroy the predecessor of the Kakhovka Dam to slow the advancing German army.