Roaring and Groaning: Demolition of Hydropower Plants on the Dnipro River

The Dnipro Rapids.

The rapids on the Dnipro River formed simultaneously with the formation of the river itself, in a form known to us, during one of the stages of the ice ages. The water, from the melting of millennium-old ice and intense precipitation in the Valdai Upland, sought its way south and found it (in Belarus, the Dnipro has a meridional direction; simply from north to south) until it encountered a highland known today as the Prydniprovian Upland, which hindered its flow.

The place where the mountains hindered the water is known to you as the city of Kyiv; the Dnipro Rapids are the edge of the upland, eroded thousands of years ago. From Kyiv, the Dnipro River gradually changed its course to the southeast; the waters flowed along the upland until they found a weak spot in it. There, the Dnipro formed a canyon within the cliffs of the Prydniprovian Upland.

The village of Vovnigy, before it was flooded. Now, on the banks of the Dnipro Reservoir, there exists its “new version.”

In this canyon, the Dnipro had the highest gradient along its entire course from Valdai to Ochakiv; over the 60-70 kilometers that separated Katerynoslav and Oleksandrivsk (Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia), the water descended almost 30 meters. For a lowland river like the Dnipro, this is a significant gradient.

But the upland did not give in without a fight; rocky outcrops of mountainous rocks across the path of the water became rapids. The Dnipro Rapids.

Despite the beauty of the struggle between the two elements – land and water – overcoming the river rapids has always been a challenging task for river transportation. Nowadays, we would call it “rafting,” but engaging in rafting when you need to transport furs and honey from Kyiv to Tsargrad (Constantinople) on a ship with a tonnage of a hundred tons is not just a refined pleasure; it is pure torment on the nerves.

In addition to the rapids, there were also weirs – rocky outcrops that didn’t span the entire width of the river but only a specific section, leaving a passage for water somewhere in the channel. Weirs posed a challenging task for pilots as the water current speed sharply increased around them.

The transportation problem posed by the rapids played a significant role in Ukrainian history, and it is no wonder that the Cossacks, who gained their freedom in navigating through them, are called Zaporozhians.

By the end of the 19th century, the rapids had become a major annoyance for the imperial government. The large-tonnage steamships of that time, unlike the Cossack boats, faced great challenges in navigating through the rapids. Essentially, due to the increasing size of river vessels, the Dnieper River became impassable for shipping. Initially, proposals were made to cut a canal through the rapids or parallel to the Dnieper’s course. It should be noted that the excavation of the rocky formations of the Pridneprovskaya Upland along a distance of 60 kilometers would have been comparable to the construction of the Panama Canal. It would have been a monumental engineering task. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, specialists from a different field intervened. They were engineers specializing in hydropower.

That marked the end of the first stage of hydropower development on the Dnieper. The second stage began. You know, in a way, I can even agree with the Soviets. “Nature is a workshop” is a slogan that sounds scary, but its essence is universal. The thing is, irrational beings, not surprisingly, do not have an impact on the nature around them; they are part of it. Humans, as rational beings, have different characteristics of existence – they need to dress warmly, cook food over fire, and illuminate themselves with electric lamps. All of this is due to the demands of their intelligence, or rather, their understanding of their needs. Intelligence allows them to understand that running around naked and freezing is not very rational.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Jews declared it the “original sin” in their national bestseller, to bite from the tree of knowledge against the will of God. Therefore, humans understand their needs. Fortunately, they can, using their intelligence, satisfy them in the least harmful way for nature. Instead of fur coats (remember, animals are killed for fur), there are synthetic fiber suits. Instead of open fires and oxygen depletion, there are induction stoves.

Those who decided to build five more hydroelectric power stations on the Dnieper clearly only used their intelligence to realize their needs, and poorly at that…

In 1955, the next one, the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, was built. Its main purpose was to supply water to the North Crimean Canal. Then, as if from a horn of plenty, the Kremenchuk, Seredniodniprovsk, Kyiv, and Kaniv Hydroelectric Power Plants were built in 1959, 1963, 1964, and 1972, respectively.

The Dnieper turned into six reservoirs, two of which – the Kakhovka and Seredniodniprovsk reservoirs – supplied water to the Dnieper water for the canals in Crimea and the Donbas. Slavuta transformed from a turbulent river into a “cascade of hydroelectric power plants.” These are not just empty words.

Out of over a thousand kilometers of the Dnieper’s flow in Ukraine, only a little less than two hundred remained in their natural state – near Kaniv and downstream from Kakhovka. The flow rate has decreased by an order of magnitude – the self-purification of the Dnieper from all that Ukraine discharges into it has become almost impossible.

Reservoirs flooded about 7,000 square kilometers of land, a small portion of which was used for agriculture. Hundreds of villages and towns were submerged, and the largest city – Novohrodivka – found itself at the bottom of the Kremenchuk Reservoir.

The most voluminous reservoir, the Kakhovka Reservoir, has covered a unique steppe nature reserve called Velikiy Lug. The “father” of the Cossacks, the jungles in the middle of the steppe, could hide a million-strong army; they hid, even though they had smaller forces – it was here that 7 out of 9 Zaporizhian Sichs were located.

It seems that the Soviet government did not need the Cossacks in any sense.

Initially, the reservoirs demonstrated a colossal increase in fish catch – up to 100,000 tons in the 1970s. However, currently, fishing on the Dnieper River does not yield more than 20,000 tons, mainly due to water bloom and pollution from all over the country (consider the self-purification and flow rate). The quality of fish is questionable.

The majority of the reservoir areas, proudly referred to as “seas” by Soviet hydroengineers, are shallow (for example, one-third of the Kiev “sea” has depths of up to 2 meters). The shallow areas heat up well in the summer, and due to the stagnant water and organic pollution, they begin to “bloom.”

One might think that all of this could have been exchanged for electricity. However, if you look into the capacity of the hydroelectric power stations (HPPs) on the Dnieper, you can’t help but think, “What the hell, electricity…”

The most powerful HPP on the Dnieper, both currently and throughout the entire existence of the HPP cascade, is the first one in Zaporizhia. DniproHES has an installed capacity of 1,570 MW (equivalent to two industrial nuclear reactors, my goodness!) with a water head of 38 meters. The reservoir area is close to 400 km², which, by the way, is the smallest in the cascade. The reason for this is the Dnieper Canyon through the Prydniprovska Upland – the flooding did not spread “wide,” but only covered the natural “bed” of the river. Information regarding the rest of the reservoirs is provided in the table below.

None of the power stations even reach half the capacity of DniproHES. As for the “weakest” of them, the Serednio-Dniprovska HPP, I’ve heard that it only “maintains the frequency” in the power grid and serves as an auxiliary source of generation. To illustrate how poorly utilized these 7,000 km² are, let me mention one fact.

The area of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir in China suddenly amounts to only 1,045 km². It is a significant figure for a hydropower plant built in the mountains, but the power of the Chinese hydroelectric complex outweighs these losses – 22,500 MW. That’s equivalent to 25 industrial nuclear reactors. The largest HPP in the world.

Moreover, due to problems caused by the HPP cascade, a portion of this electricity has to be used for the needs of the cascade itself. For example, the Bazavluk River, which used to flow into the Dnieper in the area of the Great Lug, has to be literally “pumped” by pumps into the Kakhovka Reservoir due to the difference in water levels. The rise in water level has also caused other troubles, such as increased groundwater levels. Soils are inundated along the entire cascade, and even rumors about it have reached places like Bozhedarivka (formerly Shchors), tens of kilometers away from the Serednio-Dniprovska HPP reservoir. I don’t know if those rumors can be trusted, but still…

This is the price that always has to be paid for the construction of hydropower plants in plain areas. The world has long abandoned such construction because buying out lands from owners who are against their three hectares being submerged is too costly, and the low-head HPPs have too little power for economic efficiency (what kind of head can you create in the middle of the steppe?). It is more profitable to invest in HPPs in high mountain areas, and mountainous countries continue to build HPPs even today (Norway, a narrow strip of land between the northern slope of the Scandinavian Mountains and 100,500 fjords, receives over 70% of its electricity from HPPs). But as for plain countries like Ukraine, they avoid building “seas” due to the laws of economics. However, what can you do when your country’s “laws of economics” have been unique for 70 years in a row?…

Well, no, the laws of economics have been universal here for the past 28 years. The question remains, what should be done? =)

Well, the title of this post leaves no room for alternative solutions to the cascade of hydropower plants (HPPs) problem. The construction of five HPPs in the plains was a mistake caused by a lack of intelligence and a desire to show off “engineering skills” in the surrounding environment. All the power generated by the cascade, except for DniproHPP, could easily be replaced by a single large thermal power plant or two to three nuclear power plant units. Moreover, if solar panels or wind turbines were installed on one-third of the land freed up by draining the water, the energy produced by them would be more than enough to compensate for the losses from dismantling the HPPs.

The idea of such dismantling is not new: my article is based on numerous sources, from popular articles to scientific papers. As early as 1991, Oles Honchar spoke from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada, saying, “It is believed that on the site of these decaying nuclear seas, the bread of the people’s wealth, prosperity, gardens, gardens of independence and freedom will shine.” In fact, the mention of these words in Leonid Kuchma’s book “Ukraine is not Russia” inspired me four years ago to search for information on this topic, and information was found.

The practices of other countries show that plain HPPs, like the second stage stations of the Dnipro hydrosystem, are often dismantled in our time, both in European countries and within the former leader of large HPP construction, the USA. By 2008, about 450 dams had been dismantled, 28 of which were large HPPs with a head over 15 meters (au, Kaniv HPP, why were you even built?). Moreover, hydroelectric power plants in the Rocky Mountains are also being dismantled, where the area of flooded land is minimal. The rationale? Ensuring fish passage. It may seem funny to us, but not to Americans, as they enjoy salmon.

One could argue that restoring the ecosystem in the “Ukrainian Atlantis” territories would require a lot of money and time. However, there is a counterexample: the “dismantling” of DniproHPP in 1941 and 1943. Both times, the banks of the Dnipro quickly overgrown with grass and bushes without any human intervention (there was a war going on, they had other priorities). After the second destruction of DniproHPP, it was restored only in the early 1950s, and the banks of the Dnipro remained exposed for years. There were no dust storms like in the dried-up Aral Sea today. Not to mention that the lowering of the reservoirs of HPPs will be slow and gradual, not in a “we blew up the dam!” manner.

In the sources I mentioned and others that can be found on the internet, various options for the reconstruction and/or dismantling of the cascade are proposed: from the reconstruction of all HPPs with a reduction in the head level to the complete dismantling of all HPPs. I (although I am far from hydropower engineering) would recommend preserving DniproHPP while completely dismantling the other five HPPs.

After all, it is the most powerful HPP in the country with the smallest reservoir among all six on the Dnipro River (one and a half to two gigawatts of installed capacity won’t go to waste), and instead of thousands of hectares of fertile silted farmland, the Dnipro Rapids (goodbye navigation on the Dnipro) will reappear from under its waters. However, over time, the hydrocomplex will require reconstruction as well. In his project of DniproHPP, engineer Ivan Alexandrov noted that the reservoir could be almost completely silted up within 160 years. Modern HPP projects include the construction of sediment bypass gates (valves near the base of the dam that periodically open to flush out part of the sediment), and the “Three Gorges” HPP also has such a mechanism. DniproHPP lacks this feature.

As for the remaining five HPPs in my version, their end will come. The lowering of the Kakhovka reservoir will open up a difficult but cheap and beneficial task for biologists and naturalists—the restoration of the Great Meadow. As for the North Crimean Canal, damn it, there is no problem pumping water into it from the old Dnipro level; the construction of the hydrocomplex for the sake of supplying the canal was Khrushchev’s voluntarism. The Kamianske, Kremenchuk, and Kaniv reservoirs conceal thousands of hectares of fertile (sediment is the best fertilizer in 50 years) arable land.

As for the “Kyiv Sea,” well, dear readers, you may recall that there is radioactive contamination on the bottom due to the Chornobyl disaster. Can the reservoir be lowered? Is there radiation at the bottom?

The Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Station (HPS) will have to be rebuilt at a new water level (and a regulating station, unlike the stagnant puddle of the reservoir, won’t be a hindrance). Some kind of hydrocomplex will be needed in the place of the Kyiv HPS. A similar complex will also be needed to protect Kyiv from catastrophic floods on the Dnipro River (before the construction of the HPS, the “Floods in Podol” show was more or less regular). Thus, a “HPS substitute” is needed.

I can imagine it as a flood barrier similar to those that protect Amsterdam and St. Petersburg, with a parallel water passage system during floods. The main gate is closed, but the floodwater is slowly released through the water discharge system, without any risk to the city.

This way, Ukraine can reclaim 6,000 km² of its territory (a relevant issue, isn’t it?) and free itself from the consequences of Soviet “manipulation of nature.”Roaring and Groaning: Demolition of Hydropower Plants on the Dnipro River

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