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Atomic blackmail – Russia-Ukraine war and Ramberg’s theory of vulnerability

Simon Bennett, School of Business, University of Leicester, 6 Mar 24

ABSTRACT

The Russia-Ukraine War is being fought between states committed to nuclear power. This paper references Ramberg’s nuclear powerplant (NPP) vulnerability treatise, the IAEA’s Seven Pillars of Safety metric and Pidgeon and O’Leary’s safety imagination approach to assess the safety of Ukrainian and Russian NPPs. It suggests governments should reflect on events in Ukraine, and, with reference to the above-mentioned approaches, decide whether the upside of nuclear power – the largely carbon-neutral production of electricity – outweighs the downside – giving a blackmail opportunity to hostile states. Although a cost-benefit analysis to inform decision-making is effortful, the paper suggests that failure to consider every advantage and disadvantage of nuclear power could prove costly in human and environmental terms. Drawing on Ukraine’s experience, the paper suggests the national interest is best served in time of war by generating electricity in multiple small plants rather than a few large plants.

Introduction

In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, foreign policy and nuclear expert Bennett Ramberg published his paperback Nuclear Power Plants: An Unrecognised Military Peril, whose subject is the targeting of NPPs by a protagonist to secure tactical or strategic advantage. The Russia-Ukraine War……..has made this subject relevant…………………………………………more https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207233.2024.2317089

COMMENT.

a wonderful article.  It contains so many insights that never seem to get mentioned —

 – aggressor nation would risk poisoning its own soldiers, civilians and land. 

– could target facilities with a larger footprint, such as waste storage ponds or fuel reprocessing plants.

–  the ideological-doctrinal domain of propaganda and messaging.

–  the blackmail potential of NPPs – it would seem wise to invest intellectual resources in imagining and active learning…….. a dearth of safety imagination in decision-making can be costly.

– – a large number of municipally-operated solar farms, wind farms, tidal barrages, waste-to-power and hydroelectric powerplants generating power for municipalities locally would have provided a more resilient system for Ukraine. In the matter of power generation, in time of crisis or conflict scaling-down secures.

March 28, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine