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During this war there has not been legitimate danger of nuclear accidents, just a lot of concern about this hypothetical situation. To me it seems that Ukraine

During this war there has not been legitimate danger of nuclear accidents, just a lot of concern about this hypothetical situation. To me it seems that Ukraine is trying to use nuclear concerns to stall the war and gain more international support. Arguably the only reason this war is possible is because Germany shutdown all their nuclear plants (there are a few plants left slated to be closed this year) and now rely on Russia for oil & gas. The existing sanctions are hurting, but Russia is still collecting hundreds of millions of dollars a day in oil & gas revenue. That revenue has actually gone up dramatically during the war due to increased gas & oil prices. Your concern is real, and we should do more to secure our nuclear power from accidents, but in practice energy dependence seems a greater threat to global security than nuclear power plant terrorism (also consider that there is some relation between Iraq exporting oil and wars occurring there). Similarly, the use of coal (which would be unnecessary with more nuclear production) is responsible for a much greater reduction of life span than terrorist attacks and nuclear accidents.

retrac 5y ago
> During this war there has not been legitimate danger of nuclear accidents By all accounts, the Russian forces fired missiles at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, and there was a fire on site. I too was somewhat dismissive of the "omg Chernobyl 2.0" rhetoric. It's a PWR, much newer design, quite like most Western PWR designs, with containment, and a lot more passive safety features than something like the RBMKs at Chernobyl. The likely outcome of a missile hitting the containment building itself is a wasted missile, and something hitting the cooling or support facilities would lead most likely to a power cut, not a meltdown, and even if there was a meltdown, it would likely be largely contained. Still. I do think it's fair to say that firing missiles and causing explosions and/or fires at an operating nuclear power plant has some degree of very real risk of causing a nuclear accident.
- gregwebs 5y ago
  They didn't actually fire missiles at the power plant. Instead a building on the premises that is not near the reactors was hit. If this was due to the Russians firing carelessly at the Ukranians then I agree there is some danger the projectile could have landed somewhere else and created actual risk of a nuclear accident.
  - gregwebs 5y ago
    There is better information on this now: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085427380/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-zaporizhzhia https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085427380/ukraine-nuclear-po... It does seem there was very careless firing by the Russians that was targeted at Ukranians. They don't seem to have been targeting the plant in any way, but their firing could have easily damaged the plant further if the Ukranians had taken position deeper inside it. It doesn't seem there was any danger of breaching the nuclear reactor itself, but there was danger of destroying the subsystems required for safe operation of the reactor. Obviously Russia is the one starting a war and being careless here, but it also does seem Ukraine should not station troops inside a nuclear facility but instead maintain their troops a good distance away from it.

retrac 5y ago

> During this war there has not been legitimate danger of nuclear accidents By all accounts, the Russian forces fired missiles at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, and there was a fire on site. I too was somewhat dismissive of the "omg Chernobyl 2.0" rhetoric. It's a PWR, much newer design, quite like most Western PWR designs, with containment, and a lot more passive safety features than something like the RBMKs at Chernobyl. The likely outcome of a missile hitting the containment building itself is a wasted missile, and something hitting the cooling or support facilities would lead most likely to a power cut, not a meltdown, and even if there was a meltdown, it would likely be largely contained. Still. I do think it's fair to say that firing missiles and causing explosions and/or fires at an operating nuclear power plant has some degree of very real risk of causing a nuclear accident.

gregwebs 5y ago
They didn't actually fire missiles at the power plant. Instead a building on the premises that is not near the reactors was hit. If this was due to the Russians firing carelessly at the Ukranians then I agree there is some danger the projectile could have landed somewhere else and created actual risk of a nuclear accident.
- gregwebs 5y ago
  There is better information on this now: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085427380/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-zaporizhzhia https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085427380/ukraine-nuclear-po... It does seem there was very careless firing by the Russians that was targeted at Ukranians. They don't seem to have been targeting the plant in any way, but their firing could have easily damaged the plant further if the Ukranians had taken position deeper inside it. It doesn't seem there was any danger of breaching the nuclear reactor itself, but there was danger of destroying the subsystems required for safe operation of the reactor. Obviously Russia is the one starting a war and being careless here, but it also does seem Ukraine should not station troops inside a nuclear facility but instead maintain their troops a good distance away from it.