How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[kluge]

53 minutes ago, pintere said:

There’s been lots of talk about the nuclear power plant being in danger of a meltdown if the dam blows. Now that the latter has happened, are we on track to disaster there or are there some backup options that can at least suffice for a little while?

The plant has been more or less shut down for some time now, so I imagine the risk of a full scale disaster is off the table in the immediate future.

However, the plant will eventually need a water supply to keep its reactor and fuel cooled, as a shut down reactor still generates heat that requires active cooling. Previous reports suggested that the plant will be unable to source water if the reservoir drops another 1-2 meters, and judging from the early footage of the breach, that threshold will be crossed very soon.

So while there will be no immediate disaster, the clock has started ticking.

Something will need to be done to get water to the plant. And the obvious backup options- such as trucking in water, or building additional infrastructure to draw water from the river itself- are made much more complicated by the fact that the plant sits directly on the frontline* of an active war.

* Sidenote: The plant is located at a relatively narrow part of the reservoir, which just so happens to be more or less adjacent to the Nikopol bridgehead used during WW2.

 

 

[Harmon Rabb]

A young American man with Ukrainian heritage making the ultimate sacrifice in this war.

[chris talpas]

Here is a good series of tweets on the dam including Tass now reporting it as a failure (not that anyone would accuse TASS being a paragon of truth)

 

[Battlefront.com]

41 minutes ago, chris talpas said:

Given the impact to Crimean water supply and cooling the nuke plant, I’m not convinced yet it was intentional.  Some stories on the Tass site describing concerns of failure and how they solved the problem.  We’ll see but this could have big non-military impacts.

Scorched Earth is as Russian as Human Waves.  They are both gambles on short term gains with long term losses in the balance.  I would not put it past Russia to blow the damn out of spite.  They might also think that the nuke plant is going to be lost sooner rather than later and the canal shut off even if it's not blown.  Maybe they felt that they had little to lose and more to gain militarily and as part of their genocide plans.

I looked at the videos of the damage to the dame again, and it doesn't look like the water is flowing OVER the dam.  It looks like the damn is gone.  If you look at the right bank you can see that the water is flowing lower than the surviving portion of the dam.  The water also is showing no signs of turbulence from moving over something just below the surface.

If you look at the left bank you can see that there's a big chunk of dam missing and yet the water isn't pouring over it, indicating that the section was destroyed by something other than water pressure and structural failure.

 

Obviously I am not a dam engineer (I do have a friend who is one though!), so I can not rule out a catastrophic collapse due to a combination of factors, however to me I think the most likely scenario is that Russia blew it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

17 minutes ago, chris talpas said:

Here is a good series of tweets on the dam including Tass now reporting it as a failure (not that anyone would accuse TASS being a paragon of truth)

Yeah, they would deny this no matter what.  No way would they want to be blamed for this, especially considering the impact on Crimea.  On the one hand you'd think that they would blame Ukraine for blowing it up, however even the Russians would not expect anybody to believe that.  So blaming Ukraine for weakening it with HIMARS and Excalibur makes a lot more believable.

One thing speaking in favor of catastrophic failure is nobody on the Ukraine side has offered any evidence of explosives being used.  Now that I think of it, there's no way Ukraine wouldn't have that sort of evidence.  If it doesn't show up within a day then I will switch my belief that it was catastrophic failure and not deliberate sabotage.

Steve

[paxromana]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

We should take a moment to ponder how much Copium that Russian trolls need to be consuming to think a few company sized attacks constitutes the entire counter offensive. 

Well, that's what constitutes a Ruzzian 'offensive'  ... easy mistake for vatniks and mobiks to make ... 

[chris talpas]

33 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

One thing speaking in favor of catastrophic failure is nobody on the Ukraine side has offered any evidence of explosives being used.  Now that I think of it, there's no way Ukraine wouldn't have that sort of evidence.  If it doesn't show up within a day then I will switch my belief that it was catastrophic failure and not deliberate sabotage.

Steve

Looking at the footage especially the buildings not showing blast damage but more structural collapse my money right now says structural failure through neglect and incompetence in flow management from the Russian side

[The_MonkeyKing]

Time to start a humanitarian aid operation secured by a significant military operation. Park US Navy offshore and secure the airspace.

 

[dan/california]

9 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Time to start a humanitarian aid operation secured by a significant military operation. Park US Navy offshore and secure the airspace.

 

You sir, are simply brilliant! The protected zone must of course include the nuclear plant. 

The video is was probably taken by the guy who set off the charges. Can he go to the Haugue for that?

[chris talpas]

12 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Time to start a humanitarian aid operation secured by a significant military operation. Park US Navy offshore and secure the airspace.

 

Important thing to note is dam is already breached and this video is in daylight while destruction occurred at night

[The_MonkeyKing]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

You sir, are simply brilliant! The protected zone must of course include the nuclear plant. 

The video is was probably taken by the guy who set off the charges. Can he go to the Haugue for that?

For the aid mission "intervention" it is also irrelevant who or what blew the dam.

[Maquisard manqué]

22 minutes ago, chris talpas said:

Looking at the footage especially the buildings not showing blast damage but more structural collapse my money right now says structural failure through neglect and incompetence in flow management from the Russian side

I’m sure there is a lot you could do to lead a dam to overtop or fail in other ways. Given time and intentional (or not) neglect it would happen by itself.

[Sojourner]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

The water also is showing no signs of turbulence from moving over something just below the surface.

Not to rule out a catastrophic failure, but to set the record straight, lack of turbulence isn't necessarily proof. I happen to own a dam. It's overtopped a few times during heavy storms and the water level doesn't have to rise much above the dam for the turbulence to subside.

[kimbosbread]

Pity Ukraine doesn’t have anything really heavy that could make it to the Tsimlyanskaya dam. 225 miles from Slovyansk unfortunately! Would make Rostov-on-Don really pleasant in time for the summer heat.

EDIT: Krasnodar has a nice big one too similar distance away, but that’s probably better covered by air defences given proximity to Kerch.

Edited June 6, 2023 by kimbosbread

[sburke]

4 minutes ago, Sojourner said:

Not to rule out a catastrophic failure, but to set the record straight, lack of turbulence isn't necessarily proof. I happen to own a dam. It's overtopped a few times during heavy storms and the water level doesn't have to rise much above the dam for the turbulence to subside.

another damn grog. err I mean a dam grog.

[chris talpas]

Here is a photo from yesterday.  Note where water is being released is also right where the destroyed roadbed is located.  Could the destruction of the road have weakened the dam in this location which also was being subjected to lots of water flow?

 

IMG_0069.avif

[FancyCat]

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

Hearing already that the Crimea canal has already reversed course. Russia absolutely needed it to get enough water to Crimea. An extremely desperate measure.

Wasn't it shut down in 2014 by Ukraine and restored only after the invasion in 2022? Would mean they got by without water for 8 years no?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Crimean_Canal

 

[Huba]

1 hour ago, Sojourner said:

I happen to own a dam.

And that's why this thread is so great, the scope of available expertise is off the charts!

Given the scale of destruction and the timing alone, I'm firmly in the "Russians did it!" camp. It will obviously stop any Ukrainian attack across the Dnipro, for now... But summer is only about to start, I wonder if in a few months it won't open a whole new section of the front? There's a quite big artificial reservoir near where I live, which is being completely drained every few years and apart from the old riverbed itself, it is perfectly possible to walk on it's bottom after it dries up a bit, which I did personally multiple times. It is even more true in winter when the mud just freezes over. 

Edit:

A map of the Kakhovsky Reservoir area before the dam was build:

Edited June 6, 2023 by Huba

[FancyCat]

 

[kluge]

53 minutes ago, chris talpas said:

Note where water is being released is also right where the destroyed roadbed is located.  Could the destruction of the road have weakened the dam in this location which also was being subjected to lots of water flow?

The failure that occurred in the past 24 hours was in/near the power plant, which was located at the opposite end of the spillway from the destroyed roadbed. Two separate locations on the dam, more or less.

[kraze]

russians are sending dozens of missiles to strike apartment blocks in Kyiv almost every night now.

Are we really arguing if them blowing up the dam was a natural disaster?

[DesertFox]

7 minutes ago, kraze said:

russians are sending dozens of missiles to strike apartment blocks in Kyiv almost every night now.

Are we really arguing if them blowing up the dam was a natural disaster?

Exactly. Would have been a strange coincidence if it collapsed "naturally". 

 

 

[Sojourner]

At least they're consistent ...

""Everything is quiet and calm, there is nothing at all," RIA Novosti, one of Russia's state-owned news agencies, cited the mayor, Vladimir Leontiev as saying. He later said that only "the upper part of the power plant" has been damaged, but the dam itself is intact. Leontiev later claimed that the dam was destroyed by Ukrainian shelling."

... every word is BS.

[panzermartin]

Oh my, they are all leading themselves to a wider self annihilation each passing day. I hope at least the nuclear plant stays safe. 

If the Russians had planned to blow up the dam, there must have been a months long preparation to secure water supply in Crimea, especially since summer is here?

 

[Fenris]

Small trench line attack, at first I wasn't sure whether it was training but there's someone shooting back at them.  Vision appears to be from a foreigner.  Guys might be new, they seemed a little hesitant.  Would it be better to keep someone on the 50's doing over watch?  Need more grenades.  Hope they're ok.  Until this came up, it's been almost 2 weeks since anything has been posted on Butusov's channel.

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Fenris