Peter Winsley: How do we prevent an “accident” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant?

In our 20 May post we argued there was a low risk of nuclear weapon use in Ukraine, however we noted that “what is more likely than a Russian nuclear strike is engineering an “accident” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.”

On 6 June 2023, the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine was breached, causing extensive flooding. Located on the Dnieper in Kherson Oblast, the Russian military controlled the dam, having seized it in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine.

Most of the media coverage focuses on the flooding of part of Kherson Oblast (including some low-lying suburbs of Kherson City itself), however there are far bigger implications. Specifically, the cooling systems at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant could fail, leading to a Fukushima-type event, though potentially bigger. That means an exclusion zone because of contamination around the plant (perhaps in a 30km radius) and radionuclide fallout hundreds of km downwind, the region dependent on wind direction and local rainfall conditions. The water of the Dnieper would be heavily contaminated; the radioactive load would be transported downstream and into the Black Sea. It is possible that the city of Kherson would become uninhabitable.