Russian Dictator Vladimir Putin last week eagerly confirmed that all “Peaceful Atom” nuclear power plants are fair game for military destruction and that the ensuing apocalyptic fall-out is not really his concern.
As Reuters reported, “Putin on Thursday warned Ukraine that it was playing a dangerous game by striking the area near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and suggested that Moscow could retaliate against nuclear plants controlled by Ukraine.”
The six-reactor Zaporizhzhia complex is, noted Reuters “Europe’s largest [and] has been cut off from external power for more than a week and is being cooled by emergency diesel generators.”
Zaporizhzhia was captured by Russian forces in the early days of the 2022 invasion.
The global crisis it now embodies was foreseen 45 years ago by Bennett Ramberg, in his book “Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril.”
Ramberg holds a Ph.D. in international relations and a law degree. He’s been an analyst or consultant to the Nuclear Control Institute, Global Green, Committee to Bridge the Gap and the U.S. Senate and U.S. State Department. He now directs the Global Security Seminar. Published by the University of California Press, his book and a new edition out last year are beyond chilling.
And its grave warnings are playing out in recent years and today.
According to the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission, the Indian Point nuclear reactors, 25 miles north of New York City, were potential targets considered for the September 11 attacks. Between 1984 and 1987, Iraq bombed Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant six times. In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. Air Force bombed three nuclear reactors in Iraq. It gets worse.
As an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists put it last year, “small modular reactors, floating nuclear plants, and microreactors….these emerging technologies elevate concerns that wartime attacks could expose warfighters and civilians to nuclear fallout….Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has already set a dangerous precedent that could sway the course of future wars.”
William Alberque, former director of strategy, technology and arms control of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote in a piece on the website of the London-headquartered organization in 2023 that amidst “The wartime weaponization of nuclear power stations,” the “risks of a nuclear disaster remain high at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as Russia continues to threaten the health and safety of the entire region through its reckless behaviour.”
In the war on Ukraine, he adds, “a nuclear weapon state has decided that nuclear power reactors are legitimate targets and tools of coercion in war.”
Thus, atomic reactors provide “weapons for the enemy,” serving as pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction.
Amidst yet another billionaire-hyped push for a “Nuclear Renaissance,” atomic power—including large, small, and fusion reactors—has again faltered due to runaway costs and devastating construction delays. All reactors heat the planet at 300 degrees Centigrade, emit radioactive carbon 14, and can’t match flexible demand.
Most importantly, huge breakthroughs in renewables and battery efficiency have made them cheaper, safer, cleaner, faster-to-build, and more flexible, job-producing and reliable than both fossil fuels and atomic energy. In short, they have priced out fossil/nukes. More than 90% of the world’s new energy capacity is now Solartopian, comprised of carbon/heat and waste-free renewables, battery backup-up units and increased efficiency.
But the Ukraine war has now underscored yet another “Peaceful Atom” pitfall known for decades—the threat of a rogue nation turning atomic reactors into weapons of apocalyptic mass terror and destruction.
More than 400 commercial nuclear power plants are now licensed worldwide. There are 94 in the US. The destruction of just one, at Diablo Canyon, California, could send lethal fallout pouring across the entire continental United States, while first turning Los Angeles into a radioactive wasteland.
Putin has not estimated precisely how much radioactive fallout might result from blowing up an atomic reactor. But the war in Ukraine has made it clear that it could be done with a single drone costing less than $1,000.
Putin has asked just one question about such an attack: who will stop me?
The answer could be apocalyptic: no reactor, large or small, is anywhere immune.
When Putin sent troops pouring through Belarus into northern Ukraine in 2022, they quickly assaulted the smoldering remains at Chernobyl, which infamously exploded in 1986. The seething core of Unit Four has been covered with a $2 billion sarcophagus funded by downwind European nations.
The original explosion irradiated much of Europe. Airborne clouds were detected twice passing over the U.S., killing birds in California and irradiating milk in New England.
In “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” published in 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences,” lead author Dr. Alexey Yablokov, (environmental advisor to Russian Presidents Gorbachev and Yeltsin) drew from 5,000 documents. These included health data, radiological surveys, scientific reports, and more. The conclusion was that as of 2004, as a result of Chernobyl’s fall-out, some 985,000 people had died, mainly of cancer. In the two decades since yet more thousands have been stricken.
In 2022, Putin’s invading troops seemed bound to repeat history. They terrorized and tortured Ukrainian technicians tasked to safeguard Chernobyl’s melted core against another explosion.
Tragically, the Russian soldiers camped in nearby woods, exposing themselves to heavily contaminated dust and soil.
On February 14, 2025, a Russian drone severely damaged Chernobyl’s sarcophagus. Had it hit the melted core, another global-scale radiation release could have again contaminated much of the Earth.
Putin has denied responsibility for that attack. However, he has seized the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia. As at Chernobyl, his troops terrorized, tortured and terminated vital Ukrainian staffers, seriously endangering on-going plant safety.
Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are allegedly shut. But cooling water and backup/off-site power vital to keeping the cores and fuel pools from exploding are tenuous at best. Random munitions and at least one drone have hit the plant.
By cutting transmission lines into Ukraine while running one toward Russia, Putin may soon become Earth’s first autocrat to “steal” an atomic power plant.
He’s further threatened to turn any reactor he wants into a de facto weapon of mass radioactive destruction, saving himself the trouble and expense of a Bombs and missiles.
No atomic reactor anywhere can credibly claim to be immune. The fragility of instrumentation, operational, cooling, spent fuel storage and other vital systems have been amply demonstrated at Chernobyl, Fukushima, Chalk River, Fermi, Three Mile Island, Windscale, INEL, Santa Susanna, Khyshtym, and countless other stricken atomic facilities.
Chernobyl has shown the range and killing power of resultant fallout. Japan’s Fukushima, which exploded on March 11, 2011, has since spewed 100 times more radioactive cesium than did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Its heavily irradiated liquid wastes are still pouring into the Pacific.
Though vehemently denied by the nuclear industry, the death toll from radiation releases at the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown continues to rise.
Meanwhile Ukraine deploys drones to decimate Putin’s oil and gas infrastructure, utterly ravaging Russia’s refineries, storage tanks, pipelines and more.
With his own drones, Putin has made clear he can target any reactor anywhere.
Safe, clean, green renewable energy technology now accounts for more than 90% of the world’s new energy production. No war monger can destroy a city by blowing up a solar panel or tearing down a wind turbine.
Yet Ukraine itself has four reactors on order, offering Putin still more pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction.
Likewise, California’s “anti-Trump” Governor Gavin Newsom keeps running uninsured, hyper-expensive nukes at Diablo Canyon that Putin could drone-hit tomorrow, forever bankrupting California, turning Los Angeles and the downwind nation into a permanent radioactive wasteland.
Deep in the bowels of the Kremlin, the nuclear Stalin is laughing.
Karl Grossman is the author of “Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power.” He is the host of the nationally broadcast TV program “Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman” (www.envirovideo.com)
Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman wrote “Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth,” and co-wrote (with Norman Solomon, Bob Alvarez & Eleanor Waters) “Killing Our Own: The Disaster of
America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation. His Green Grassroots Election Protection is aired via Zoom (www.grassrootsep.org) on most Mondays at 5 p.m. ET.
Harvey Wasserman wrote the books Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and The Peoples Spiral of US History. He helped coin the phrase “No Nukes.” He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition at www.electionprotection2024.org Karl Grossman is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He the host of the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman (www.envirovideo.com)