SAFETY & SECURITY | TARGETING NUCLEAR
Nuclear facilities as targets of attack
Understanding the operational and strategic logic of why states may use military force against nuclear installations may help identify approaches for reducing related risks. A new research paper aims to do just that.
RUSSIA’S FULL-SCALE INVASION OF Ukraine in February 2022 has centred concerns on the threat that militaries pose to nuclear installations. In the wake of that on-going conflict, a new paper from the UK defence and security think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) explores these themes with the objective of assessing the implications for nuclear safety and deriving potential mitigation strategies. As more countries become interested in pursuing nuclear
energy as a source of clean and sustainable power, and as non-proliferation norms are increasingly challenged, the probability that nuclear installations will find themselves the targets – or unintentional victims – of the use of military force could increase. While emphasising that such military activity should not be normalised, the report argues that political and military leadership must nonetheless be ready to anticipate, mitigate and respond to potential future military attacks on nuclear installations. The author, Darya Dolzikova, notes that while Ukraine’s situation is unique, the threat of military strikes on nuclear facilities is nothing new. Military force has been used or seriously considered against and in the vicinity of nuclear installations on multiple occasions before and stretches back to the earliest days of the nuclear era. Between 1942 and 1943, for example, Allied forces carried out a series of
operations targetting the Vemork heavy water production plant in Norway that was being used as part of a German effort to build a weapon. The facility was ultimately destroyed in a bombing raid in November 1943. Since then, Iraqi strikes on Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power
Plant (at the time still under construction), Israeli attacks on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and Israel’s bombing of Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor in 2007 are some of the better-known examples and in many other instances, attacks have been considered but not executed.
Military drivers for nuclear targeting The paper outlines five contexts in which military force may be used or threatened to be used against nuclear
installations. These are: ● As a counterproliferation tool ● For energy disruption purposes ● For area denial ● To generate escalatory, deterrent or coercive effects ● When a nuclear site is encountered on an axis of advance or during a broader military operation.
Counterproliferation objectives have historically been a prevalent driver for the use of military force against nuclear facilities but success as a counterproliferation tool varies on
Above: Attacks on nuclear facilities stretch back to the earliest days of the technology with allied operations targeting the Vemork heavy water production plant in Norway Source: Bjørn-Owe Holmberg/Norsk Industriarbeidermuseum
20 | June 2025 |
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