The Fallout from Russia's Attack on Ukrainian Nuclear Facilities
From commentary by William Potter:
"It is tempting to portray Russian military action against Ukraine’s nuclear power infrastructure as not only immoral and illegal — which it is — but also irrational. This may well prove to be the case. However, it appears that Russian military planners were motivated to seize Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia — and possibly Yuzhnoukrainsk, Rivne, and Khmelnytskyi as well — in pursuit of several military objectives.
The first, particularly relevant to the seizure of the Chernobyl plant, has to do with its location: about 12 miles from the Belarussian-Ukrainian border along the northern invasion route to Kyiv. Not only did it serve as a useful point of encampment for Russian troops in preparation for the attack on the Ukrainian capital, but it must have been viewed by Russian military planners as a safe haven from counter-attacks due to the huge quantity of radioactive material still present in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The Russian attack on and seizure of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station near the city of Enerhodar, about 340 miles southeast of Kyiv, may also have been motivated in part by its location along a route of advancing forces. However, unlike at Chernobyl, there was little need in that sector for an encampment point.
A second likely military objective is threatening to freeze the inhabitants of Kyiv and other cities into submission by turning off their electricity. The Zaporizhzhia plant is the largest power station in Europe and accounts for slightly over 20 percent of the total electricity generated in Ukraine. Were Russia also to take control of the Yuzhnoukrainsk power station, the second largest nuclear plant in Ukraine, it would control approximately 60 percent of Ukraine’s nuclear energy-generating capacity, which accounts for more than 50 percent of all electricity production in Ukraine."
SNIP
"In addition to violating this body of legal and political constraints, Russian attacks on Ukrainian nuclear facilities are a direct assault on the international norms regarding nuclear violence that have developed since the advent of the nuclear age. These norms underpin a taboo or tradition against nuclear violence in its many forms. Ironically, only a few months ago, this taboo appeared to have been strengthened by the joint statement made by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council that a nuclear war could not be won and must never be fought. While most international attention correctly is focused on the departure from that principle due to the reckless nuclear weapons threats made by President Vladimir Putin during the past two weeks, Russian attacks on civilian nuclear power facilities also have the effect of weakening the norm against nuclear violence."
More: https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/fallout-from-russias-attack-on-ukrainian-nuclear-facilities-military-environmental-legal-and-normative/
From William Potter's Wikipedia page: William C. Potter is a Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). He also directs the MIIS Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
Dr. Potter has contributed chapters and articles to over one hundred and twenty scholarly books and journals.[1] He has served as a consultant to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the RAND Corporation, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has been a member of several committees of the National Academy of Sciences and currently serves on the National Academy of Sciences Nonproliferation Panel.
His present research focuses on nuclear terrorism and proliferation issues involving the post-Soviet states. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and served for five years on the United Nations' Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters and the Board of Trustees of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. He currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the Center for Policy Studies in Russia (Moscow). He was an advisor to the delegation of Kyrgyzstan to the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and to the 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2007 sessions of the NPT Preparatory Committee, as well as to the 2000 and 2005 NPT Review Conferences.
In 2019, Dr. Potter was elected as a Foreign Member to the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Potter is one of a limited number of non-Russian nationals honored by the Academy, and only the second American—after Henry Kissinger in 2016—ever elected to the RAS Global Issues and International Relations Section.[2]
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