[ From time to time, Vladimir Putin or one of his cronies has
hinted that the Russians, pressed to the wall, might use a
“tactical” nuclear weapon in Ukraine. And Russian military leaders
have reportedly been discussing just such a possibility.]
[[link removed]]

THE NUCLEAR “WAR” IN UKRAINE MAY NOT BE THE ONE WE EXPECT  
[[link removed]]


 

Joshua Frank
February 28, 2023
TomDispatch
[[link removed]]

*
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*
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*
*
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_ From time to time, Vladimir Putin or one of his cronies has hinted
that the Russians, pressed to the wall, might use a “tactical”
nuclear weapon in Ukraine. And Russian military leaders have
reportedly been discussing just such a possibility. _

With the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine coming
under renewed shelling, concerns have been raised about its safety.
The IAEA has said that the current situation around Zaporizhzhia
complex could lead to a “nuclear disaster”., photo: CNN
(CRUX(India)

 

In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred
American leaders and politicians warning that the “unleashed power
of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we
thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein’s forecast
remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks.

Even prior to Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, the
threat of a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia was
intensifying. After all, in August 2019, President Donald Trump
formally withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Treaty, long heralded as a pillar of arms control between the two
superpowers.

“Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s
demise,” declared
[[link removed]] Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo following the announcement. “With the full support
of our NATO allies, the United States has determined Russia to be in
material breach of the treaty and has subsequently suspended our
obligations under the treaty.” No evidence of that breach was
offered, but in Trump World, no evidence was needed.

Then, on February 21st of this year, following the Biden
administration’s claims
[[link removed]] that
Russia was no longer abiding by its obligations under the New START
treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms accord between the two
nations, Putin announced
[[link removed]] that
he would end his country’s participation.

In the year since Russia’s initial assault on Ukraine, the danger of
nuclear war has only inched ever closer. While President Biden’s
White House raised doubts
[[link removed]] that
Putin would indeed use any of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons in
Ukraine, the _Bulletin of Atomic Scientists_ ominously reset its
Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight
[[link removed]], the closest
since its creation in 1947. Those scientific experts weren’t buying
what the Biden administration was selling.

“As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, the last remaining nuclear
weapons treaty between Russia and the United States… stands in
jeopardy,” read
[[link removed]] a January 2023
press release from the _Bulletin_ before Putin backed out of the
agreement. “Unless the two parties resume negotiations and find a
basis for further reductions, the treaty will expire in February 2026.
This would eliminate mutual inspections, deepen mistrust, spur a
nuclear arms race, and heighten the possibility of a nuclear
exchange.”

Of course, they were correct and, in mid-February, the Norwegian
government claimed Russia had already deployed ships armed with
tactical nukes in the Baltic Sea for the first time in more than 30
years. “Tactical nuclear weapons are a particularly serious threat
in several operational scenarios in which NATO countries may be
involved,” claimed
[[link removed]] the
report. “The ongoing tensions between Russia and the West mean that
Russia will continue to pose the greatest nuclear threat to NATO, and
therefore to Norway.”

For its part, in October 2022, NATO ran its own nuclear bombing
drills, designated “Steadfast Noon
[[link removed]],”
with fighter jets in Europe’s skies involved in “war games”
(minus live weaponry). “It’s an exercise to ensure that our
nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective,” claimed NATO
chief Jens Stoltenberg, but it almost seemed as if NATO was taunting
Putin to cross the line.

And yet, here’s the true horror story lurking behind the war in
Ukraine. While a nuclear tit-for-tat between Russia and NATO — an
exchange that could easily destroy much of Eastern Europe in no time
at all — is a genuine, if frightening, prospect, it isn’t the most
imminent radioactive peril facing the region.

AVERTING A MELTDOWN

By now, we all ought to be familiar with the worrisome Zaporizhzhia
nuclear complex (ZNPP), which sits right in the middle of the Russian
incursion into Ukraine. Assembled between 1980 and 1986, Zaporizhzhia
is Europe’s largest nuclear-power complex, with six 950-megawatt
reactors. In February and March of last year, after a series of fierce
battles, which caused a fire to break out at a nearby training
facility, the Russians hijacked the embattled plant. Representatives
of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were later sent in to
ensure that the reactors weren’t at immediate risk of meltdown and
issued a report stating
[[link removed]],
in part, that:

“…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 and that renewed shelling at or near the ZNPP was deeply
troubling for nuclear safety and security at the facility.”

Since then, the fighting has only intensified. Russia kidnapped some
of the plant’s Ukrainian employees, including its deputy director
Valery Martynyuk. In September 2022, due to ongoing shelling in the
area, Zaporizhzhia was taken offline and, after losing external power
on several occasions, has since been sporadically relying on old
diesel backup generators
[[link removed]].
(Once disconnected from the electrical grid, backup power is crucial
to ensure the plant’s reactors don’t overheat, which could lead to
a full-blown radioactive meltdown.)

However, relying on risk-prone backup power is a fool’s game,
according to electrical engineer Josh Karpoff. A member of Science
for the People [[link removed]] who previously
worked for the New York State Office of General Services where he
designed electrical systems for buildings, including large standby
generators, Karpoff knows how these things work in a real-world
setting. He assures me that, although Zaporizhzhia is no longer
getting much attention in the general rush of Ukraine news, the
possibility of a major disaster there is ever more real. A backup
generator, he explains, is about as reliable as a ’75 Winnebago.
 

BUY THE BOOK
[[link removed]]

“It’s really not that hard to knock out these kinds of diesel
generators,” Karpoff adds. “If your standby generator starts up
but says there’s a leak in a high-pressure oil line fitting, it
sprays heated, aerosolized oil all over the hot motor, starting a
fire. This happens to diesel motors all the time. A similar diesel
engine fire in a locomotive was partly responsible for causing
the Lac Megantic Rail Disaster
[[link removed]] in
Quebec back in 2013.”

Sadly enough, Karpoff is on target. Just remember how the backup
generators failed at the three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan,
in 2011. Many people believe that the 9.0 magnitude underwater
earthquake caused them to melt down, but that’s not exactly the
case.

It was, in fact, a horrific chain of worsening events. While the
earthquake itself didn’t damage Fukushima’s reactors, it cut the
facility off from the power grid, automatically switching the plant to
backup generators. So even though the fission reaction had stopped,
heat was still being produced by the radioactive material inside the
reactor cores. A continual water supply, relying on backup power, was
needed to keep those cores from melting down. Then, 30 minutes after
that huge quake, a tsunami struck, knocking out the plant’s seawater
pumps, which subsequently caused the generators to go down.

“The myth of the tsunami is that the tsunami destroyed the
[generators] and had that not happened, everything would have been
fine,” former nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson told
[[link removed]] Amy
Goodman on _Democracy Now!_ “What really happened is that the
tsunami destroyed the [sea] pumps right along the ocean… Without
that water, the [diesel generators] will overheat, and without that
water, it’s impossible to cool a nuclear core.”

With the sea pumps out of commission, 12 of the plant’s 13
generators ended up failing
[[link removed]].
Unable to cool, the reactors began to melt, leading to three hydrogen
explosions that released radioactive material, carried disastrously
across the region and out to sea by prevailing winds, where much of it
will continue to float around
[[link removed]] and accumulate
[[link removed]] for
decades.

At Zaporizhzhia, there are several scenarios that could lead to a
similar failure of the standby generators. They could be directly
shelled and catch fire or clog up or just run out of fuel. It’s a
dicey situation, as the ongoing war edges Ukraine and the surrounding
countries toward the brink of a catastrophic nuclear crisis.

“I don’t know for how long we are going to be lucky in avoiding a
nuclear accident,” said
[[link removed]] Rafael Grossi, director
general of the IAEA in late January, calling it a “bizarre
situation: a Ukrainian facility in Russian-controlled territory,
managed by Russians, but operated by Ukrainians.”

BAD THINGS WILL FOLLOW

Unfortunately, it’s not just Zaporizhzhia we have to worry about.
Though not much attention has been given to them, there are, in
fact, 
[[link removed]]14
other nuclear power plants
[[link removed]] in
the war zone and Russia has also seized the ruined Chernobyl plant,
where there is still significant hot radioactive waste that must
be kept cool
[[link removed]].

Kate Brown, author of _Plutopia_, told
[[link removed]] Science
for the People last April:

“Russians are apparently using these two captured nuclear
installations like kings on a chessboard. They hold Chernobyl and the
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power reactor plants, and they are stockpiling
weapons and soldiers there as safe havens. This is a new military
tactic we haven’t seen before, where you use the vulnerability of
these installations, as a defensive tactic. The Russians apparently
figured that the Ukrainians wouldn’t shoot. The Russians noticed
that when they came to the Chernobyl zone, the Ukrainian guard of the
Chernobyl plant stood down because they didn’t want missiles fired
at these vulnerable installations. There are twenty thousand spent
nuclear fuel rods, more than half of them in basins at that plant.
It’s a precarious situation. This is a new scenario for us.”

Of course, the hazards facing Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl would be
mitigated if Putin removed his forces tomorrow, but there’s little
possibility of that happening. It’s worth noting as well that
Ukraine is not the only place where, in the future, such a scenario
could play out. Taiwan, at the center of a potential military conflict
between the U.S. and China, has several nuclear power plants. Iran
operates a nuclear facility. Pakistan has six reactors at two
different sites. Saudi Arabia is building a new facility. The list
only goes on and on.

Even more regrettably, Russia has raised the nuclear stakes in a new
way, setting a distressing precedent with its illegal occupation of
Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl, turning them into tools of war. No other
power-generating source operating in a war zone, even the worst of the
fossil-fuel users, poses such a potentially serious and immediate
threat to life as we know it on this planet.

And while hitting those Ukrainian reactors themselves is one recipe
for utter disaster, there are other potentially horrific
“peaceful” nuclear possibilities as well. What about a deliberate
attack on nuclear-waste facilities or those unstable backup
generators? You wouldn’t even have to strike the reactors directly
to cause a disaster. Simply take out the power-grid supply lines, hit
the generators, and terrible things will follow. With nuclear power,
even the purportedly “peaceful” type, the potential for
catastrophe is obvious.

THE GREATEST OF EVILS

In my new book _Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place
in America_
[[link removed]],
I probe the horrors of the Hanford site in Washington state, one of
the locations chosen to develop the first nuclear weapons for the
covert Manhattan Project during World War II. For more than 40 years,
that facility churned out most of the plutonium used in the vast
American arsenal of atomic weapons.

Now, however, Hanford is a radioactive wasteland, as well as the
largest and most expensive environmental clean-up project in history.
To say that it’s a boondoggle would be an understatement. Hanford
has 177 underground tanks loaded with 56 million gallons of steaming
radioactive gunk. Two of those tanks are currently leaking, their
waste making its way toward groundwater supplies that could eventually
reach the Columbia River. High-level whistleblowers I interviewed who
worked at Hanford told me they feared that a hydrogen build-up in one
of those tanks, if ignited, could lead to a Chernobyl-like event here
in the United States, resulting in a tragedy unlike anything this
country has ever experienced.

All of this makes me fear that those old Hanford tanks could someday
be possible targets for an attack. Sabotage or a missile strike on
them could cause a major release of radioactive material from coast to
coast. The economy would crash. Major cities would become unlivable.
And there’s precedent for this: in 1957, a massive explosion
[[link removed]] occurred
at Mayak, Hanford’s Cold War sister facility in the then-Soviet
Union that manufactured plutonium for nukes. Largely unknown, it was
the second biggest peacetime radioactive disaster ever, only
“bested” by the Chernobyl accident. In Mayak’s case, a faulty
cooling system gave out and the waste in one of the facility’s tanks
overheated, causing a radioactive blast equivalent to the force of 70
tons of TNT, contaminating 20,000 square miles
[[link removed]].
Countless people died and whole villages
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forever vacated.

All of this is to say that nuclear waste, whether on a battlefield or
not, is an inherently nasty business. Nuclear facilities around the
world, containing less waste than the underground silos at Hanford,
have already shown us their vulnerabilities
[[link removed]]. Last August, in fact, the
Russians reported that containers housing spent fuel waste at
Zaporizhzhia were shelled by Ukrainian forces. “One of the guided
shells hit the ground ten meters from them (containers with nuclear
waste…). Others fell down slightly further — 50 and 200
meters,” alleged [[link removed]] Vladimir
Rogov, a Russian-appointed official there. “As the storage area is
open, a shell or a rocket may unseal containers and kilograms, or even
hundreds of kilograms of nuclear waste will be emitted into the
environment and contaminate it. To put it simply, it will be a
‘dirty bomb.’”

Ukraine, in turn, blamed
[[link removed]] Russia for the
strike, but regardless of which side was at fault, after Chernobyl
(which some researchers believe affected upwards of 1.8 million
people
[[link removed]])
both the Ukrainians and the Russians understand the grave risks of
atomically-charged explosions. This is undoubtedly why the Russians
are apparently constructing
[[link removed]] protective
coverings over Zaporizhzhia’s waste storage tanks. An incident at
the plant releasing radioactive particles would damage not just
Ukraine but Russia, too.

As former _New York Times_ correspondent Chris Hedges so aptly put
it
[[link removed]],
war is the greatest of evils and such evils rise exponentially with
the prospect of a nuclear apocalypse. Worse yet, a radioactive
Armageddon doesn’t have to come from the actual detonation of
nuclear bombs. It can take many forms. The atom, as Einstein warned
us, has certainly changed everything.

_Copyright 2023 Joshua Frank. Cross-posted with permission. May not
be reprinted without permission from TomDispatch
[[link removed]]._

_[JOSHUA FRANK, a TomDispatch regular
[[link removed]], is an
award-winning California-based journalist and co-editor
of CounterPunch [[link removed]]. He is the author of
the new book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in
America
[[link removed]] 
[[link removed]](Haymarket
Books).]_

_Follow TomDispatch on Twitter
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Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands
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Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War
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as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
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Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World
War II
[[link removed]], and
Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from
America’s Wars: The Untold Story
[[link removed]]._

* Ukraine war
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* Russia
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* Ukraine
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* Vladimir Putin
[[link removed]]
* nuclear weapons
[[link removed]]
* tactical nuclear weapons
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* Europe
[[link removed]]
* NATO
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* peace
[[link removed]]
* military weapons
[[link removed]]
* START Treaty
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* disarmament
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* Peace and Disarmament
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* nuclear arms race
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