Preventing the Unthinkable

Witnessing Russian aggression toward Ukrainian nuclear energy power plants and infrastructure during the recent invasion, the world must examine potential threats to other nuclear power plants scattered across the globe. While the nuclear policy community has been active in protecting these sites from terrorist attacks, the challenge is how we can better respond to future nuclear energy infrastructure (NEI) threats during conventional or unconventional warfare.

Attacks on NEI can have military, political, or other values or objectives. To counter these threats, the nuclear policy community must advocate for the legal and physical protection of NEI from conventional or unconventional attacks. These protections are necessary to ensure that attacks on NEI are not normalized or that armies do not use NEI sites as bases. Furthermore, protecting these sites is necessary to ensure that nuclear energy continues to be a viable power source.

During Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian military forces targeted nuclear energy sites as part of a larger military operation. The invasion included the bombing of a nuclear waste storage site near Kyiv; the capture of the Chernobyl nuclear accident site; and a battle to capture Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in the world. Russian forces shelled the plant, causing fires and other damage that threatened the reactor and, thus, a potential nuclear accident. After the battle, Russian forces continued to occupy by deploying troops and munitions at the plant. Military operations around both sites caused concern that military action might cause a release of radioactive material or other dangers.

While this incident shook the international community, the threat of conventional military attacks damaging nuclear power reactors is not unique to Ukraine and could happen in various global trouble spots. Bennett Ramberg, a former State Department analyst and author of Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, told the New York Times, “History underscores the urgency…The scale of the current threat demands a renewed effort by the international community.” He went on to call for both legal and physical protection of atomic plants during the time of war. In 2023, approximately 440 nuclear power reactors were operating in 32 countries plus Taiwan, with another 55 power reactors currently being constructed in 19 countries, notably China, India, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Just as nations have feared terrorists using nuclear devices, they have also feared a “dirty bomb,” which is a conventional explosive device that can spread radioactive materials. Nuclear power plants are possible military targets for several reasons, including the fact that their destruction or capture can hinder the energy infrastructure of a nation, which can be a valid military objective. However, conventional military attacks on nuclear power plants bring about more issues than attacks on conventional power plants, because whether deliberate or accidental, they can create radioactive fallout similar to that would emerge from a large-scale dirty bomb. Likewise, irregular forces can also target these sites to disrupt the power infrastructure and make the sites unusable again.

How can the nuclear policy community better respond to future NEI threats during conventional or unconventional warfare? How can we protect these sites, and what would that protection mean for larger military planning?

The first question we need to ask is why a military would want to attack the NEI of another nation. Such an action could have several motives:

• To destroy the enemy’s power infrastructure. Destroying a nation’s power grid will help to hinder the operations of a modern military that runs on computers and other power-based facilities. The U.S. has had a history of attacking electric infrastructure since World War II, and it was effective in stopping Iraqi responses during the 1991 and 2003 invasions.
• To acquire nuclear technology that is not already owned by the aggressor. A nation might try to seize a nuclear plant or another facility to acquire nuclear technology within. This could occur when one of the nations (or groups) does not have nuclear technology but wants to acquire it. This scenario could occur with a group like ISIS attacking a reactor to gain technology.
• To destroy the potential to develop or produce nuclear weapons. Just as Israel attacked the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 to stop Iraq from building an atomic bomb, sometimes a nation attacks the NEI of another nation to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons. While this is a dangerous affair, in the case of the 1981 raid, the reactor had not reached a place where it released radiation into the environment.
• To create a “dirty bomb”–like attack on the nation. This scenario has never occurred, but as seen from the 2011 earthquake in Japan that seriously damaged the Fukushima nuclear plants, serious damage to a plant by a disaster (man-made or natural) can release radioactive fallout. It has also been “war gamed” in official channels and several popular fiction novels, like former Delta Force member Dalton Fury’s Full Assault Mode.
• To use the threat of an NEI attack as a terror weapon. This is the most common scenario before the Russo-Ukraine war. Planners viewed terrorists or other irregular forces as a threat to nuclear power plants and infrastructure. These forces would attack the plant and release radiation that would cause panic and terror among the local populace. Since the 1960s, there have been 80 terrorist attacks on NEI facilities.
• To use NEI sites for some other military value. Finally, the NEI site might be attacked because it has some other military objective. It might be located at a transportation junction, on high ground, or near an airport. Or, defensive forces might be using the site as a base of operation.

Listed below are six recommendations for stopping or discouraging military forces from attacking NEI. These possible solutions are based on methods developed to protect cultural heritage sites during armed conflicts. While NEI facilities have a higher potential of causing harm if attacked, the concepts on how to protect heritage sites work very well when utilized to protect NEI facilities.

1. Identify and map NEI facilities. All NEI facilities should be identified before any hostilities, and that information should be available to military planners so they can avoid them in operations, just as planners know the location of identified heritage sites to ensure they are not attacked. However, providing a list and location of your NEI facilities can also result in the other side targeting them for destruction.
2. Strengthen existing laws of war to outlaw any attack on NEI facilities. There must be a clear message that this type of attack will not be tolerated. While most legal experts suggest the current laws offer protection to NEI facilities, recent actions in Ukraine suggest that it is time to revisit the treaties and ensure they meet today’s realities. We must realize that the growth of technology usually outpaces the treaties that control the processes of war. Just as we have to deal with new weapons like autonomous weapon systems which are not currently regulated by international treaties, we need to rethink what needs to be off-limits for future combat operations.
3. Train militaries to protect NEI. Militaries need to ensure that all members of the services (from the privates to the generals) understand their obligations in protecting NEI during armed conflict. Just as Western armies have been working to develop new Monuments Men and other groups to protect heritage during conflict, units need to receive training on what NEI facilities are and how to avoid them. An app or a deck of cards, like the one that was developed to identify heritage items, should also be used to help the soldiers understand the concepts.
4. Establish crisis management teams. The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should develop rapid deployment crisis management teams (patterned after the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST), which pulls together world-class scientists and technical experts to contend with non-military radiological and nuclear challenges) that can quickly be placed in conflict areas to help stabilize a situation involving attacks on NEI facilities. These teams must include nuclear power experts and engineers, diplomats to ensure open lines of communication, and security experts to help protect NEI faculties from further attack. The teams also need to be diverse enough that their members would not be viewed as intelligence agents by the host nation. The teams would be responsible for stabilizing problems, and as such, they would serve more as problem solvers than traditional inspectors.
5. Organize a charette to generate new ideas to protect NEI. The IAEA and other organizations sponsor a design charette of engineers to come up with solutions to protect NEI faculties. The charette concept in architecture allows engineers, architects, and other interested parties to gather together and brainstorm new ideas and come up with innovative solutions to the design of plants to protect them from possible attacks. The charette would also include finding a sponsor for an international award for the best solution.
6. Retrofit older NEI facilities. Based on designs from the charette and other sources, IAEA would assist nations in retrofitting their existing NEI facilities with the proposed improvements to assist them in protecting the facilities during armed conflict. Of course, this would be a very expensive process and would take many years to accomplish.

Of course, these proposed solutions are far from perfect, and their implementation would likely face several obstacles. For example, there’s significant disagreement among nations about even basic rules of war, much less those that would protect NEI. As Russia has illustrated during its recent military operations in Syria, Ukraine, and other places, many nations do not follow established rules of war, even when the nations have signed international agreements. The costs and engineering requirements of the proposed fortification and the retrofitting of NEI facilities may be unaffordable to some nations, and others may not abide by the recommendations. Another possibility is that, because of the fear of causing a nuclear accident or incident, armies will use NEI sites for protection during armed conflict since they see the enemy as cautious about attacking the sites. Finally, due to the fear of attack on their NEI facilities, nations might move away from nuclear energy back to fossil fuels. This will result in an increase in carbon emissions, as well as continued reliance on other nations for energy needs, which could have larger geopolitical consequences.

The Russian attacks on Ukraine have illustrated that a previously unthinkable option is no longer off the table. While the use of nuclear weapons might be off the table, the threat of using attacks on NEI facilities is a current terror weapon. To counter this threat in future battlefields across the globe, the world community must protect nuclear power plants and infrastructure from being used as weapons. We must strengthen both the legal and physical protections of the plants through stronger treaties and engineering. Also, we must train militaries to understand the importance of not targeting the sites and make the penalties for those actions as severe as possible. This threat must be a wake-up call to stop the weaponization of NEI facilities before we face such peril again.