Atomic Blackmail?: The Weaponisation of Nuclear Facilities During the Russia-Ukraine War

By Dr Simon Ashley Bennett

In Atomic Blackmail? Simon Bennett examines the very real possibility of the ‘weaponisation’ of nuclear facilities during the Russia-Ukraine War.

The War is being fought in proximity to nuclear facilities and working nuclear power stations, including the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Europe’s largest, and the decommissioned four-reactor Chernobyl NPP that, in 1986, suffered a catastrophic failure that released radioactive contamination across much of Europe.

In 1985, foreign affairs and nuclear expert Bennett Ramberg published Nuclear Power Plants: An Unrecognised Military Peril. In his visionary discourse, Ramberg posited that in future wars, regional or global, nuclear facilities and powerplants might be weaponised to gain political traction over an opponent and neutralise opposing forces’ capacity for battlefield manoeuvre.

While, at the time of writing Atomic Blackmail?, none of Ukraine’s fifteen reactors had been damaged in an exchange of fire, the possibility remains that this could happen during Ukraine’s 2023, and subsequent, offensives to expel Russian forces from sovereign Ukrainian territory.
Though Ramberg’s nightmare vision of destroyed NPPs rendering a country uninhabitable has not, yet, been realised in the Russia-Ukraine War, the longer and more intense the conflict, the greater the likelihood that one or more of Ukraine’s NPPs will be damaged or, via a credible sabotage threat, used to leverage tactical or strategic advantage. Atomic blackmail finally exampled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Libri Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Aug 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781911451167

Dr Simon Ashley Bennett

Dr Simon Bennett teaches risk management at the University of Leicester, England. He is interested in the organisational, social, economic and political origins of risk. For example, loss of organisational memory, mindlessness, groupthink, reductionism, passive learning, hollowing-out, satisficing, graft, political instability, terrorism and armed conflict. He is a Member of the Air Safety Group of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS). His books include: Insecurity in the Supply of Electrical Energy: An emerging threat to information and communication technologies? (published by Libri Publishing in 2010); Innovative Thinking in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management (an edited collection published by Gower in 2012); Systems-thinking for Safety. A short introduction to the theory and practice of systems-thinking (published by Peter Lang International Academic Publishers in 2019); Safety in Aviation and Astronautics. A socio-technical approach (published by Routledge in 2022).

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First published in 2023 by Libri Publishing

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ISBN 978-1-911451-18-1

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to those who fight for freedom of thought, belief, expression and identity.

List of figures

C.1 Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Europe’s largest

P.1 In 1986 the Chernobyl, Ukraine nuclear facility suffered a catastrophic failure when a steam explosion ruptured the containment of Reactor Number 4, releasing radiation into the environment

P.2 In 2018, Ukraine announced the commissioning of Chernobyl’s New Safe Confinement (NSC) shelter. The edifice, funded by the European Bank for Reconstruction, cost €1.5bn ($1.7bn). By the time the NSC was commissioned, Ukraine had been invaded by Russia. Crimea had been illegally annexed

P.3 The Zaporizhzhia facility in south-eastern Ukraine has six pressurised light water reactors, making it the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Zaporizhzhia generates nearly half of the country’s nuclear electricity

1.1 The four-reactor Rivne nuclear power plant in north-western Ukraine. Cities and towns in north-western Ukraine such as Lviv have been hit by Russian cruise missiles. Nowhere in Ukraine is safe from bombardment

1.2 Photograph shows an Iraqi Scud missile downed by a US Army Patriot surface-to-air missile during Operation Desert Storm. During the war, Iraq launched over eighty missiles against Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Scud can reach an altitude of sixty-two miles (327,360 feet) and attain a speed of 4,500 miles per hour

1.3 On 8 April, 2022, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev. It was one of President Zelensky’s ambitions that Ukraine, like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia should join the European Union. During her visit, von der Leyen saw the town of Bucha, where, allegedly, Russian soldiers had murdered civilians before abandoning their mission to seize Kiev, having been routed by stout Ukrainian opposition

1.4 Photograph shows a Royal Air Force Typhoon intercepting a Russian Sukhoi SU-27 Flanker heavy fighter over the Baltic on 17 June, 2014. By March 2014, Russia had completed its illegal annexation of Crimea. Following the loss of Crimea, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) launched Operation Orbital to train Ukrainian troops to NATO standards. The MoD planned to train 20,000 Ukrainian troops in 2023

1.5 The port city of Mariupol fell to the Russians after a prolonged siege of the city’s sprawling Azovstal steelworks. According to The Economist (2022), circa 45% of the city had been gravely damaged, with circa 90% of ruined buildings … residential. The photograph shows war-damaged residential properties

1.6 In 1979, President Brezhnev sent troops to Afghanistan on the advice of the KGB to secure a pro-Moscow regime. In 2022, President Putin sent troops to Ukraine to install a pro-Moscow regime. History has a habit of repeating itself. It is edifying to compare Brezhnev’s 1979 mind-set with Putin’s 2022 mind-set. Photograph shows a Red Army T-62 Main Battle Tank (MBT) leaving Afghanistan following President Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw. In time, the quicksand of Afghanistan’s sectarian politics would swallow up the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, whose scrambled exit from Kabul in 2021 (Shea, 2021) was eerily reminiscent of the chaotic US withdrawal from Saigon in 1975. The more vehemently NATO governments claimed the 2021 fall of Kabul was nothing like the 1975 fall of Saigon, the more it looked like the 1975 fall of Saigon ventures Bennett (2023c)

1.7 Coventry city centre after the eleven-hour raid of 14 November, 1940. The razing of Coventry city centre spawned the verb Coventrate – to raze through concentrated bombing. Other provincial cities, for example, Swansea, suffered a similar fate (Bowler, 2006)

2.1 An actor-network is composed of stories (intangibles) and things (tangibles). The former shape the nature, functioning and environment of the latter (Bennett, 2019a, p.11)

2.2 Tokyo was devastated by a deluge of incendiary and high-explosive bombs dropped by hundreds of B-29s. Hiroshima was devastated by a single bomb dropped by a single aircraft, a B-29 named Enola Gay (pictured). Nuclear weapons are efficient (although their development costs are significant)

3.1 America’s Castle Bravo thermonuclear device produced a yield of fifteen megatonnes, two-and-a-half times the predicted yield of six megatonnes. Residents of islands lying to the east of Bikini Atoll were affected by fallout. Every nuclear test is an experiment. Outcomes are difficult to predict. In the case of Castle Bravo, the lithium-7 isotope did not behave as expected. Photograph shows the Castle Bravo shot (detonation)

3.2 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia (ISAMZ) inspectors peer into a hole created by either a bomb or missile. Zaporizhzhia’s Reactor Number 2 building can be seen in the background. Zaporizhzhia is the largest NPP in Europe

3.3 Documenting damage done to the exterior of Zaporizhzhia’s Reactor Number 4 building following a bout of shelling in November, 2022

3.4 South Ukraine is the second-largest NPP in Ukraine with three reactors. Its output is supplemented with output from, for example, the Oleksandrivska hydroelectric power plant (HPP) and the Tashlyk Pumped-Storage Power Plant (PSPP). Ukraine has made its power supply more resilient by employing a variety of generating technologies. Diversification improves resilience

3.5 In 2022, Germany agreed to supply thirty-seven mothballed Gepards to Ukraine for point-defence tasks. Germany asked both Switzerland and Brazil to supply ammunition for the Gepards. When both countries refused to help, the German government asked munitions company Rheinmetall to produce the ammunition in Germany. Photograph shows an early marque of Gepard

3.6 An artist’s rendering of the lumbering, noisy and slow-flying Shahed-136 drone. Shaheds, vulnerable to ground-fire, are no match for Ukraine’s German-supplied Gepards. Sometimes, a technology deemed obsolete – Germany mothballed its Gepards in 2012 – is made relevant again by a new tasking. For example, by Ukraine’s need to take down Iran’s technologically regressive Shahed loitering munition

3.7 The Rivne NPP, with four reactors, is located in north-western Ukraine, well away from the bloody eastern front. Nevertheless, the fact that Russia has attacked regional centres such as Lviv with cruise missiles should give cause for concern. The government plans to modernise the ageing plant with new, small modular reactors (SMRs) (Power Technology, 2022)

3.8 Ukraine uses Soviet-era SAMs, such as this S-300 mobile battery, to defend against medium-altitude and high-altitude threats. Given the age and country of origin of the S-300, Ukraine may, at some point, find it impossible to source replacement missiles and spares. Should this happen, Russia may decide to re-introduce its air force to the conflict, thereby threatening Ukrainian armoured formations and civilian infrastructure

4.1 The Moskva, with a crew of almost five hundred, was sunk by one or more Ukrainian anti-ship missiles, probably fired from a mobile shore battery. The Russians claimed the vessel had sunk following a fire unconnected to any Ukrainian action. The Moskva had seen action in another of the Kremlin’s expansionist wars, the Russia-Georgia War of 2008

4.2 On 26 June, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the people of West Berlin, corralled by the Russians behind The Berlin Wall, in Rudolph Wilde Platz. On 20 February, 2023, President Joe Biden met with President