OPINION | JEREMY GORDON
Jeremy Gordon is an independent communication consultant with 18 years of experience in the international energy industry. His company Fluent in Energy supports partners of all kinds to communicate matters of clean energy and sustainable development.
Nuclear: caught in the crossfire
Jeremy Gordon calls on the nuclear industry to mount a serious, unified response to the recent events in Ukraine
THE UNIT: Illustration copyright Alexy Kovynev
The precedent was set on the first day of the conflict when Russian troops arrived at the Chernobyl site. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was quick to tweet about it: “Russian occupation forces are trying to seize Chernobyl. Our defenders are giving their lives so that the tragedy of 1986 will not be repeated. This is a declaration of war against the whole of Europe.” Eight days later, as Russian troops approached
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba tweeted: “Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broken out. If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl!”
HE CONFLICT BETWEEN RUSSIA AND Ukraine has taken the nuclear industry into uncharted territory. Other conflicts have come close (see Archive, this issue), but this is the first time an operating nuclear power plant has been attacked. And it is the first time public fear of
nuclear has been used by both sides to rally support. For different reasons, both Ukraine and Russia have consciously chosen to make nuclear energy itself a battlefield.
12 | April 2022 |
www.neimagazine.com
With those words echoing through the media, an unbelievable scene unfolded where a Russian armoured column approached Zaporizhzhia, meeting deadly defensive force from a Ukrainian military unit and the plant’s guards, three of whom sacrificed their lives while two were seriously wounded. Energoatom got through this extraordinary challenge without any reduction in nuclear safety, but Russian forces took control of the plant, surrounding it to command the entrance and the administration building. Shortly after the battle, the State Nuclear Regulatory
Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) reported that the plant was safe with all cooling requirements met. But it added, “The loss of the possibility to cool down nuclear fuel will lead to significant radioactive releases into the environment. As a result, such an event may exceed all previous accidents at nuclear power plants, including the Chernobyl accident
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