How a second nuclear disaster was avoided at Chernobyl in 2022
- The Russian occupation underscored the risks posed by nuclear sites in wartime
Chernobyl Roulette. By Serhii Plokhy. W.W. Norton; 240 pages; $29.99. Allen Lane; £25
In the small hours of February 24th 2022, Valentyn Heiko received a phone call at work. Gunfire could be heard at Vilcha, less than 50km away: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was under way. “We’re keeping calm for the time being,” Mr Heiko told his colleague, even though there were no guidelines for what employees at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant should do in the event of war. The invaders were coming—Chernobyl lay on the route from Belarus, a Russian staging-post, to Kyiv—yet there was also no question of Mr Heiko or his team leaving their stations.
By the early afternoon, a special unit of Russian troops had arrived at the plant, with orders to seize it. Threatened with destruction akin to a “meat grinder”, Ukrainian guardsmen put down their weapons. Thus began the Russian occupation of the plant, which would last 35 days. It was thanks only to the actions of the plant’s employees that another calamity at Chernobyl was averted.
In a new book Serhii Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, offers a gripping, thriller-like account of those days. The nuclear facility is terrain he knows well: Mr Plokhy previously produced an outstanding account of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the worst nuclear catastrophe in history, which was caused by the explosion of a reactor. (Mr Plokhy’s book partly inspired an award-winning television series in 2019.) “Chernobyl Roulette” offers similarly penetrating insight into the people involved and the decisions made.
Russian forces continued to arrive at Chernobyl after February 24th. Their morale was low, having expected a speedy victory against Ukraine. Many had little understanding or respect for the rules governing the plant. (The reactors are no longer operational and the plant is in the process of being decommissioned, but a large workforce is required to monitor and control radiation levels.) Soldiers were frequently drunk and constantly looted the premises: they started with notebooks and phones, but moved on to computers, vehicles and radiation dosimeters.
A month into the occupation of the plant, Slavutych—a city in northern Ukraine which had been purpose-built to house the families evacuated in 1986—came under sustained bombardment. On March 26th Russian forces entered the town after three days of determined resistance. The Russians were warned by staff at the plant that if anything happened to their families they would end all co-operation. The mayor of Slavutych, Yurii Fomichev, believed that the Russians had seized Chernobyl to blackmail Ukraine and the world with threats of another nuclear disaster. Now that weapon was used against them.
At the same time, “power in the relations between occupiers and occupied was slowly shifting to Heiko,” Mr Plokhy writes. The cool-headed foreman told the Russians that if they thought they were in control of the plant, they were wrong. He pointed out the perils of being at the nuclear station and insisted that they obey Ukrainian safety regulations. The occupiers “now felt trapped, hostages in the place they had allegedly conquered”.
At the end of March the Russians began pulling out of both Chernobyl and Slavutych. (By then they had stolen $135m worth of equipment from the plant.) Ukrainian forces were on the way, having thwarted the main Russian advance on Kyiv. Mr Heiko and his colleagues had made life-or-death decisions on whether and when to co-operate or resist the invaders, not knowing how those decisions would be judged. Mr Plokhy has no doubt they should be regarded as heroes.
But Ukraine’s nuclear nightmare is far from over. After a fierce battle, on March 4th 2022 the Russians succeeded in taking control of Zaporizhia, Europe’s biggest nuclear-power station. They are still there. Russia uses it as a military shield from which to attack Ukrainian positions.
Ukrainians fear that Russia might commit an act of nuclear terrorism at Zaporizhia and dress it up as an accident. Those fears are not unfounded, given that Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam in June 2023, which threatened Zaporizhia’s water supply and devastated nearby towns and villages. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, called it “an environmental bomb of mass destruction”.
Mr Plokhy has come to believe that the risks of nuclear power outweigh the benefits. In particular, he argues that the world and its nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, are complacent about the dangers posed by acts of war against nuclear sites; he says that new legal and institutional safeguards are urgently needed. After reading this book, few will disagree.
For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter
© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com
Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
Business NewsSpecialsHow a second nuclear disaster was avoided at Chernobyl in 2022
First Published:13 Dec 2024, 06:00 PM IST
- Top Gainers
- Top Losers
- 52 Week High