NDA (II) 2023 General Ability Test · Question 147 of 146

Correct — C, Ukraine. The dam stood at Nova Kakhovka, a town in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, and held back the Kakhovka reservoir on the Dnieper. It was in the news for the worst of reasons three months before this paper: on 6 June 2023 an explosion tore out the central section of the structure, which was about 3.2 km wide, and released the reservoir downstream without control. Tens of thousands of people were left in the flood zone and more than fifty died; over forty towns and villages were severely flooded and large numbers of livestock were lost. The drinking water of some 700,000 people was put at risk, irrigation for grain, sunflower and vegetable crops was cut off, and the reservoir was also the source of cooling water for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Rebuilding the dam has been estimated at at least five years and a billion dollars.

• (a)Belarus — Belarus lies upstream on the Dnieper, which does rise in Russia and cross Belarus before entering Ukraine, so the river is a genuine link — but Nova Kakhovka is far downstream, close to the Black Sea coast in southern Ukraine.
• (b)Turkey — Turkey has no connection with this dam. Its own large dam projects sit on the Tigris and the Euphrates, hundreds of kilometres away and in a different basin entirely.
• (d)Poland — Poland is drained by the Vistula and the Oder, not the Dnieper, and had no dam in the news at this time. It is included only as a plausible eastern European name.

The Kakhovka dam was one of a chain of Soviet-era structures on the Dnieper, built to generate power, to feed a very large irrigation network across the dry steppe of southern Ukraine and Crimea, and to supply industrial and municipal water. Its destruction shows how much a single structure can be carrying: when the reservoir emptied, the flood downstream and the loss of stored water upstream both did damage, and the plant that depended on the reservoir for cooling was left exposed.

Current-affairs locators like this one are answered on association rather than on detail. In 2023 there was one place in Europe generating that kind of news, and Nova Kakhovka is a Ukrainian town on the Dnieper — the Kherson region is the same stretch of country that had been fought over since 2022. The wider lesson is worth carrying beyond the mark: dams are strategic objects, and the consequences of losing one run through drinking water, irrigation, power and, in this case, the cooling of a nuclear plant. As of the September 2023 exam the dam was gone and the reservoir drained, and that remains the position today; the rebuilding estimate of at least five years and a billion dollars has not been overtaken by any reconstruction.

• The Kakhovka dam stood at Nova Kakhovka in Kherson Oblast, southern Ukraine, on the Dnieper river.
• On 6 June 2023 an explosion damaged the central section of the roughly 3.2 km wide dam, releasing the reservoir downstream.
• More than fifty people died, over forty towns and villages were severely flooded, and the drinking water of some 700,000 people was affected.
• The reservoir supplied cooling water to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and rebuilding the dam has been estimated at at least five years and a billion dollars.

• Placing any east European news item in Poland or Belarus by default.
• Confusing the Dnieper with the Danube, which flows through central Europe to the same sea by a different route.
• Remembering only the flooding and forgetting the loss of stored water for irrigation and reactor cooling.

Asked as a bare locator — name in the news, pick the country — with three plausible neighbours as decoys.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Kakhovka dam, destroyed in June 2023, stood on which river ?

  • (a)Danube
  • (b)Dnieper
  • (c)Vistula
  • (d)Volga

  Answer(b) Dnieper — the dam at Nova Kakhovka in Kherson Oblast held back the Kakhovka reservoir on that river.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The reservoir behind the Kakhovka dam supplied cooling water to

  • (a)the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
  • (b)the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
  • (c)a thermal power station in Belarus
  • (d)a desalination plant on the Black Sea

  Answer(a) the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — which is why the dam's destruction raised nuclear safety concerns as well as flood concerns.