One Thing Nuclear Power Plants Weren’t Built to Survive: War

Mar 18, 2022 | Kate Brown, Susan Solomon
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The day Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian forces took control of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A week later, flares from Russian artillery lit up the Zaporizhzhia plant; Ukrainian media reported that the Russian army had placed land mines around the plant’s perimeter and was stockpiling arms at both nuclear installations. The army is now pointed at yet another nuclear facility, the South Ukraine plant. 

Military strategists routinely target electrical grids and power plants to incapacitate the enemy. But Russia’s is the first invasion of a country that derives more than half its energy from nuclear power. It stands to reason that Russian generals will seek to capture all 15 active reactors in Ukraine. 

It is difficult to believe, but in all the decades of imagining nuclear-emergency scenarios, engineers did not design for an event so human and inevitable as war.

In a Ukraine powered by renewable energy sources, bombs would scatter hazardous solid wastes nearby, but wind and solar sources wouldn’t emit radioactive toxins that blow thousands of miles on air currents, remain in environments for centuries and migrate up the food chain. What’s more, renewables can be decentralized, distributing power sources too broadly to be a prime target.