Playing with fire: military attacks against a civilian nuclear power station

Abstract

There is only one word to describe subjecting a civilian nuclear power plant to a military assault: reprehensible. Until now such an attack by one country against a nuclear power plant located in a different country would have seemed ludicrous. Might terrorists target a nuclear plant? Of course, and there has been much written about this possibility. But one country’s military targeting a nuclear facility in another country? That seemed almost beyond the realm of comprehension. World opprobrium against the perpetrator would almost certainly prevent this from happening. Or at least that was the assumption until now. And yet, as the world sadly knows, that is exactly what happened in the opening weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to National Public Radio (NPR), an American public broadcaster, ‘A thorough review of a four-hour, 21-minute security camera video of the attack [revealed] that Russian forces repeatedly fired heavy weapons in the direction of the [Zaporizhzhia nuclear power] plant’s massive reactor buildings’. The Zaporizhzhia plant is Europe’s largest nuclear generating facility. It was recently estimated that there are 150 facilities on site that store spent nuclear fuel rods, all of which require protection and active management. The NPR reporting was subsequently reinforced by a statement issued by the World Nuclear Association, an international organisation that represents the global nuclear industry, which said, ‘[W]e condemn in the strongest terms the direct attack [on the power plant] by the Russian armed forces’.