In the fantastically terrifying HBO miniseries “Chernobyl,” the scientist Valery Legasov warns, "If we don't find out how this happened, it will happen again." The same could be said, I fear, about the predations of a revanchist Russia, where President Vladimir Putin seems as blinkered to reality as the most deluded members of the Soviet Politburo.
The explosion of the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant outside Pripyat, Ukraine, in April 1986 was one of the great failures of the Communist regime. Now, in trying rebuild that Soviet empire, Putin’s troops have seized not just the radioactive ruins at Chernobyl but also the functioning nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Europe.
What are the odds of another Chernobyl-scale disaster? The International Atomic Energy Agency says it’s unlikely. But I raised the issue with Serhii Plokhy, the author of the forthcoming “Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters,” and he takes a darker view. Plokhy, who grew up in Ukraine, is the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. He also wrote a fantastic book on another potential nuclear catastrophe: “Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Here is a lightly edited transcript of our discussion:
Tobin Harshaw: The Chernobyl site is no longer transmitting data to the IAEA, and the electricity has been cut off. How much of a concern is that?
Serhii Plokhy: The concern is enormous, and the threat of a nuclear accident is very real. The emergency generators can work for only 48 hours; after that there will be no electricity to keep the equipment going. In the new 1.5 billion euro confinement over the damaged 4th unit of the station, electricity is needed to keep the pressure lower than in the atmosphere, not allowing the radioactive particles to get out of the structure.
But the biggest concern is the spent-fuel facility that contains 20,000 fuel assemblies. One needs electricity to keep the assemblies from overheating, or they can start disintegrating and releasing enormous amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.
TH: How dangerous is it that an exhausted skeleton crew of Ukrainian prisoners of war is now overseeing the ruins?
SP: The Ukrainian personnel at the Chernobyl facilities are kept in virtual captivity, are not allowed to communicate with their superiors or loved ones, have no medicine, little food — which they are saving, as no one knows what comes next. They are doing their best, working in shifts to keep the equipment functioning and radiation levels under control. With the recent damage to the power supply by the military action in the area, a lot depends on their professionalism. But they are under enormous stress, and if this is not a recipe for a nuclear disaster, I do not know what is.
TH: More generally, how stable is the facility now, in terms of a potential disaster in either war or peacetime? Is the “new safe confinement” that covered the old steel and concrete sarcophagus a lasting solution?
SP: Yes, it is a lasting solution. The structure should be good for another 100 years or so. But there is one caveat: There should be no war in the area, no shelling, no disruption of the supply of electricity, etc. The facility prevents the escape of radiation from the damaged reactor, but does nothing to deal with the source of that radiation — the remains of the fuel and radioactive debris in the damaged reactor. The removal of that source of radiation is a task for the next few decades. That is, of course, if the current war ends and the Ukrainian nuclear regulating authorities restore their control over the facility and the unpopulated Exclusion Zone as a whole.
TH: When the Russians were seizing the Zaporizhzhia plant, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned in a video message that an explosion there could spell the “end of Europe.” Was that hyperbole?
SP: The continuing occupation of the Zaporizhzhia plant could lead to a nuclear disaster that could dwarf Chernobyl. The reactors have been shut down by the Ukrainian personnel. But it takes a long time for their active zones to be cooled. If the war continues, the electricity can be cut like happened at Chernobyl.
What could follow is well known from the story of the Fukushima plant in Japan. There, four reactors either experienced a partial meltdown, or their containment structures exploded, because of the lack of electricity needed to pump water and cool the reactors. In Fukushima, the prevailing direction of winds was toward the ocean. There is no ocean around Ukraine, just European landmass. So, yes, the end of Europe as we know it was and still is a distinct possibility.
TH: Why have the Russians apparently made taking these plants a high priority? To scare the West?
SP: The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was in the way of the Russian troops moving from the Belarus border to Kyiv, the shortest route available to the aggressors, and they used it, raising radiative dust in the Exclusion Zone with their tanks and equipment. The Zaporizhzhia plant happened to be on the way from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, toward central Ukraine. But the Russians could easily have passed it by. The point was indeed to scare Ukraine and the world. We are dealing here with nuclear terrorism.
TH: Apparently people are stockpiling against disaster. Bloomberg News reports that the price of a bottle of potassium iodine pills on Amazon has more than doubled since the beginning of the year. Is this sort of precaution smart or silly?
SP: Ukrainians lived through Chernobyl, so for them a threat of another Chernobyl happening is not purely theoretical. The new nuclear crisis is happening literally in their backyards; the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located next to the city called Enerhodar [“energy’s gift”] of over 50,000 inhabitants. Under the circumstances, it would be silly not to take precautions. The media outlets put on their sites instructions on what to do in case of a nuclear emergency.
TH: Finally, you grew up mostly in Ukraine. What are your hopes and fears right now about the war?
SP: My hope is that it ends soon, and that Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, along with the basic principles of international order, are restored. My fear is that the war drags for a long, long time. Out of that fear comes another hope, for the international action, not just solidarity, that would not allow that to happen.
Bloomberg
