Chernobyl Is Now A War Zone: What Could Go Wrong? 

Authored by Dr. Jim Green via Common Dreams,

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia poses several nuclear threats, including the possibility of deliberate or inadvertent military strikes or cyber-strikes on nuclear facilities.

There is also the obvious difficulty of safely operating nuclear reactors in a time of war, including the impossibility of carrying out safeguards inspections. Last but not least, there remains the possibility that the conflict will escalate into nuclear warfare. We are about to learn what happens when nuclear-powered nations go to war, putting nuclear power plants at risk of deliberate or accidental military strikes and thus risking a Chernobyl scale catastrophe.

Retaliation

It seems highly unlikely that either nation—or any sub-national groups—would deliberately target nuclear reactors or spent fuel stores in the current conflict. But assuming there is a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ not to target nuclear power plants, how long would that agreement hold in a war that dragged on for years?

Either nation might choose to shut down its reactors in order to minimize risks. That would be a manageable and wise decision for a country with limited reliance on nuclear power—but it would be impractical for countries with a heavy reliance.

In any case, the radioactive reactor cores—whether kept in situ or removed from the reactors—would remain vulnerable, as would nuclear waste stores. Spent fuel cooling ponds and dry stores often contain more radioactivity than the reactors themselves, but without the multiple engineered layers of containment that reactors typically have. And if there is an attack on a reactor or spent fuel store resulting in a Chernobyl or Fukushima scale catastrophe—whether deliberate or accidental, whether instigated by a nation-state or extra-state group—disaster response measures would likely be chaotic and woefully inadequate.

A strike on one warring nation’s nuclear reactors or waste stores could result in like-for-like retaliation. Rinse and repeat until multiple Chernobyl or Fukushima scale catastrophes are unfolding simultaneously.

Conflict

Even if catastrophe was averted, the wisdom of operating nuclear power reactors would be reconsidered in the aftermath of war. The warring nations—and many others besides—would likely reduce their reliance on nuclear power or abandon it altogether. Nuclear power plants are pre-deployed radiological weapons. Put bluntly, humanity might have the wisdom to phase out the use of pre-deployed radiological weapons for electricity generation before nuclear-powered nations go to war and deliberately or inadvertently cause nuclear catastrophes.

Or we might have to learn the hard way that using pre-deployed radiological weapons to boil water wasn’t such a great idea after all. All the more so given the manifold connections between the ‘peaceful atom’ and nuclear weapons programs.

The Russian MOD has published footage from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It says that the local Ukrainian National Guard unit has joined the Russian forces & they’re now guarding the plant together. pic.twitter.com/ZtbVsxGA7t

— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) February 26, 2022

The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine provides a test-case of the above war-gaming. The worst-case scenario of nuclear-powered nations at war would involve evenly matched adversaries fighting a long war. The current conflict isn’t so much a war as an invasion of a weaker nation-state by a powerful adversary. Most likely it will not drag on for years as some wars do. That said, simmering conflict stretching on for years is likely, so nuclear plants will remain at risk.

Disaster

Russia has several thousand nuclear weapons. Ukraine ceded ownership and control of nuclear weapons located in Ukraine to Russia in the aftermath of the Cold War—although that hasn’t stopped Putin invoking the spectre of a non-existent Ukrainian nuclear weapons program in recent days.

Russia’s 38 reactors supply 20.6 percent of the country’s electricity. Ukraine’s 15 power reactors across at four sites generate 51.2 percent of the country’s electricity. The risk of an inadvertent attack on reactors or nuclear waste stores is somewhat higher than a deliberate attack. Russia has just taken control of the Chernobyl nuclear site. The reactors were all closed long ago, but high-level nuclear waste remains on site.

James Acton from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes that Ukraine has constructed a nuclear waste storage facility at Chernobyl for spent fuel from other nuclear plants, but the introduction of spent fuel has probably not yet occurred. Nevertheless, spent fuel from the Chernobyl reactors is still located there.

It’s conceivable that waste stored at Chernobyl could be hit if and when Ukraine attempts to take back control of the site. The next Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster could happen in Chernobyl. The containment dome over the infamous Chernobyl #4 reactor protects a huge inventory of radioactive material. The next Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster could involve the same reactor.

Dystopian

Incursions and fighting around the Chernobyl plant could also disperse existing contamination. Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer recently noted in the Washington Post: “The delivery of air-to-surface munitions, artillery, mortar and multiple rocket-launcher fire in the Belarus-Ukraine border area could also disperse radioactive debris in the soil.”

Craig Hooper, a senior contributor at Forbes writes: “The world has little experience with reactors in a war zone. Since humanity first harnessed the atom, the world has only experienced two ‘major’ accidents—Chernobyl and Japan’s Fukushima disaster.” A Russian invasion, coupled with an extended conventional war throughout Ukraine, could generate multiple International Atomic Energy Agency ‘Level 7’ accidents in a matter of days. Such a contingency would induce a massive refugee exodus and could render much of Ukraine uninhabitable for decades.

“Turning the Ukraine into a dystopian landscape, pockmarked by radioactive exclusion zones, would be an extreme method to obtain the defensive zone Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to want. Managing a massive Western-focused migratory crisis and environmental cleanup would absorb Europe for years.”

Here’s a (slightly) uplifting photo from RIA Novosti.

Shows a Russian soldier and Ukrainian guardsmen keeping a joint eye on the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. pic.twitter.com/r7BJK9U1TW

— The Intel Crab (@IntelCrab) February 26, 2022

He adds: “Put bluntly, the integrity of Ukrainian nuclear reactors is a strategic matter, critical for both NATO and non-NATO countries alike.”

Toxic

“It seems unlikely that Russia has mobilized trained reactor operators and prepared reactor crisis-management teams to take over any ‘liberated’ power plants. The heroic measures that kept the Chernobyl nuclear accident and Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster from becoming far more damaging events just will not happen in a war zone.”

Bennett Ramberg, a former foreign affairs officer in the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, and author of the 1985 book Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy, discussed the nuclear risks associated with the Russia‒Ukraine conflict in a February 14 piece for Project Syndicate.

Ramberg writes: “Power plants are common targets in modern conflict, because destroying them inhibits a country’s ability to carry on fighting. But nuclear reactors are not like other energy sources. They contain enormous amounts of radioactive material, which can be released in any number of ways.”

“Aerial bombing or artillery fire, for example, could break a reactor’s containment building or sever vital coolant lines that keep its core stable. So, too, could a cyberattack that interrupts plant operations, as would a disruption of offsite power that nuclear plants rely on to keep functioning.

“Were a reactor core to melt, explosive gases or belching radioactive debris would exit the containment structure. Once in the atmosphere, the effluents would settle over thousands of miles, dumping light to very toxic radioactive elements on urban and rural landscapes.”

Read the rest of the report at CommonDreams.org