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Russian brinkmanship imperils Ukraine’s nuclear power plants

FORUM Staff

The risk of a nuclear disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear plant in Ukraine remains high six months after Russian forces captured the plant, according to international experts. Other nuclear plants in Ukraine are also in jeopardy, as a Russian missile struck within 300 meters of the Pivdennoukrainsk plant in southern Ukraine on September 19, 2022, The Associated Press (AP) reported.
Ukrainian officials denounced the strike, which hit industrial equipment but missed the plant’s three reactors, as an act of “nuclear terrorism,” AP reported.

Russia’s takeover in March 2022 of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, one of the world’s 10 largest, raised international fears that a nuclear disaster even greater in size and scope than Chernobyl could be imminent. Most experts consider the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine to be the worst nuclear power disaster, causing unprecedented health, economic and environmental effects.

Almost immediately after Zaporizhzhia was seized, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev called Russia’s shelling of the plant a “war crime.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy predicted that an explosion at the plant could be on the scale of “six Chernobyls.” “We survived a night that could have stopped the history of Ukraine, the history of Europe,” he said.

Since then, little has changed to allay fears of a nuclear catastrophe or to change perceptions that Russia is imperiling the region seven months after its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Shelling near the Zaporizhzhia plant continued throughout August and early September even as experts from the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), inspected the plant. (Pictured: A Russian armored vehicle is parked outside Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant during an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection September 1, 2022.)

“Any further escalation affecting the six-reactor plant could lead to a severe nuclear accident with potentially grave radiological consequences for human health and the environment in Ukraine and elsewhere,” the IAEA warned in its 52-page report released September 6.

“By choosing to invade a nuclear power plant, and putting Zaporizhzhia in the crossfire, Russia is playing roulette with nuclear safety,” Barbara Woodward, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the U.N., told the U.N. Security Council the same day.

Several days later, the Zaporizhzhia plant lost power when shelling damaged lines providing electricity to maintain the cooling systems, further elevating concern. To reduce risk of a meltdown, the last of the plant’s six reactors was placed in cold shutdown. External power, however, is needed to cool the reactors.

“If the power goes off, we’re then reliant on fairly elderly diesel generators to run the safety systems,” retired British Army Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, an expert in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, told CBS News. “For a nuclear power station in the U.S. or U.K. to have to go on emergency power might happen once or twice in a decade. So when you’ve got it happening once or twice a week … the chances of further problems increase exponentially.”

Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., called the reactor’s shutdown a forced decision for her country. “The complete resolution is for Russians to get out, to implement the recommendations of the IAEA and to demilitarize the plant … That will bring their safety,” she said in a September 11 television interview.

On September 16, the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors passed a resolution calling on Moscow to immediately cease occupation of the plant, AP reported. The IAEA also called for the facility and surrounding area to be designated a demilitarized zone. Rafael Grossi, IAEA director general, said the Russian military should return “full control of the facility to Ukraine,” echoing Ukrainian and U.S. requests.

Although power was restored to the plant September 17, Rossi tweeted that “the situation is still precarious.” The IAEA is maintaining a presence at the plant to monitor the reactor.

Many analysts remain skeptical that Russian President Vladimir Putin will remove his troops from the plant peacefully. “He’s got very few ace cards. I think for him, Zaporizhzhia is an ace card that he is not going to give up without a fight,” de Bretton-Gordon said.

“Ukraine’s civil military facilities have become important military strategic locations for Russia. It has not needed to threaten the use of nuclear weapons,” Maxim Starchak, a Moscow-based expert on Russian nuclear policy, defense and the nuclear industry wrote in a September 9, 2022, article for the Center for European Policy Analysis. “And since there is an order of magnitude more radiation inside a reactor than in a bomb, radiation pollution due to the explosion of a nuclear reactor would be far larger.”

Russia’s military leadership has repeatedly stated that destroying power plants could be as effective as using nuclear weapons. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, warned after Zaporizhzhia was shelled that “we should not forget that there are nuclear power plants in the European Union. And accidents are also possible there.”

The attacks are part of Russia’s attempts to take Ukrainian nuclear plants offline before winter by targeting their power supplies, Patricia Lewis, the international security research director at the Chatham House think tank in London, told AP.

“It’s a very, very dangerous and illegal act to be targeting a nuclear station,” she said. “Only the generals will know the intent, but there’s clearly a pattern.”

IMAGE CREDIT: REUTERS

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