Chernobyl Roulette: War in the Nuclear Disaster Zone

Nearly 80 years since Hiroshima and 40 years since the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, some citizens of the world have become complacent about the dangers of nuclear power. Not so Serhii Plokhy, Director of Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute. Along with a dozen books on Russia and Ukraine, Chernobyl Roulette is his fourth book on nuclear issues—the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, the Cuban missile crisis, and a global history of nuclear disasters. As Plokhy writes, the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine has entailed risky versions of roulette at the Chernobyl and Zaporozhia nuclear power plants.

The saddest person I have ever met was a 55-year-old physician from Belarus who had been treating children and teenagers maimed by the poisons released in the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl. Later, in the early 1990s, I translated for some of the young victims of Chernobyl whom charities permitted to vacation with families in the Boston area and receive specialized treatment at local hospitals. They were from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, but all understood Russian. After their long flight across the Atlantic, many of their faces showed fatigue and pain, especially those in wheelchairs, but many beamed with hope and excitement.

One might expect that, knowing the horrific consequences of the 1986 disaster, Kremlin leaders would be ultra careful about dealing with nuclear plants and weapons anywhere. Instead, they treated nuclear power as just another tool in their campaign to destroy Ukraine and rebuild the empire of Peter I, Catherine II, and Iosif Stalin.

Not since Adolf Hitler has the world experienced such a great power leader as Vladimir Putin—indifferent not only to international law and custom but to the intrinsic risks of his actions. His troops occupied the still dangerous Chernobyl nuclear plant for 35 days early in Russia’s war against Ukraine and operated in the radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as if there was no danger to them or to others,

Ukraine became independent in 1991, but President Vladimir Putin’s Russia seized Crimea and parts of the Donbas border region in 2014. Starting in February 2022, Putin’s forces were absolutely reckless in their Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Invading from Belarus in the north, they marched through the Nuclear Exclusion Zone covering many miles of irradiated soil around the locked-down Chernobyl plant. They even dug trenches in the poisonous soil. Russian troops surrounded the plant and kept Ukrainian technicians inside as captives for 35 days, until the soldiers retreated north with other Russian forces driven back from the great gates of Kyiv,

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine has not produced electricity since the last reactor was shut down in December 2000, but spent nuclear fuel is cooled at the site. Although the plant’s reactors have all ceased generation, Ukraine has maintained a large workforce at the plant because the ongoing decommissioning process requires constant management.

Ukraine still has three working nuclear plants, but the plant at Zaporizhia (“beyond the rapids” of the Dnipro River), the largest in Europe, has not produced electricity since it came under Russian control in March 2022. The plant is mostly shut down and all six reactors have been in cold shutdown   

On September 11, 2020, Unit No. 6, the last operating reactor at the site, was disconnected from the power grid. Shortly afterward, a back-up power line was restored, allowing for an external electricity supply to enable the cooling and transition to the "cold stop" state.

The situation became more dire in June 2023 when the Russians blew up their section of the Kakhova Dam, emptying the reservoir and threatening the station’s cooling pond.

The plant is still surrounded by Russian forces but maintained by thousands of Ukrainian technicians kept inside like captives or hostages. The number of employees to the plant is reported to be around 3,000—down from some 10,000 before the conflict.

In 2024 an external radiation monitoring station 16 km from the plant was destroyed by shelling and fire.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly called on Russia to halt all actions at or against nuclear facilities, but its appeals are ignored. Zaporizhia is in danger from frequent shellings in the area and the lack of experienced operators, more than half of whom have departed.

The fates of the Chernobyl and Zaporizhia plants reveal the careless behavior of Russian officials and their indifference to human life—Russian and non-Russian. Another disaster like Chernobyl 1986 would again imperil Belarus and much of Europe as well as Ukraine and parts of Russia.

Putin’s threats to employ nuclear weapons in Ukraine and against targets in NATO countries may just be bluffs meant to intimidate, but the behavior of Russian authorities at Chernobyl and Zaporizhia reinforces the image of idiotic sadism in the Kremlin and throughout the armed forces.

Plokhy performs a service to humanity by detailing these dangers in his reader-friendly but authoritative book, based on a wide range of sources.

As Plokhy underscores, the IAEA has no way to enforce its appeals. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is paralyzed by great power vetoes while the UN General Assembly is weakened by the many delegations reluctant to anger their hoped-for benefactor in Moscow. Meanwhile, most of the world sleeps and the US Congress focuses on the budget deficit and other issues far from Ukraine.