Yrurtj

The question

Has there ever been a military combat going on around an active (running or in outage but not decommissioned) commercial nuclear power plant? Or dangerously near it? If yes, how did the plant and its personnel fare in such situation?

Why I ask

Let's assume for the scope of this question modern commercial nuclear power plants (CANDU, PWR, BWR of generation II plus all of gen III and newer) are usually reasonably safe to operate given that the engineering has been done right and there is a whole cohort of very well trained personnel on-site at all times, well rested and with considerable resources on their hands. Things hard to get with an armed conflict like the recent Syrian war raging around. I can't seem to find any reference or a comprehensive article about this, hence this question.

Best example I know of is the Zhaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant. Its in Southern Ukraine, which unfortunately put it right within the area that the Russians "separatist rebel forces" wanted to use to carve themselves a corridor of Russian territory through Ukraine to Crimea in 2014.

I don't believe the city itself was directly attacked, but it was at one point only about 200KM from the fighting in Donesk, and some armed separatists did at one point reportedly try to take over the nuclear plant. It was enough of a concern that the residents started calling up and arming militias, setting up checkpoints, and digging trenches to defend the city.

In case you were wondering, this plant does in fact use a different (and safer) design than the Chernobyl plant. However, it has more reactors than a typical nuclear plant (6), which means more chances for something to go wrong in a reactor.

Define war zone further: US wages "war on terror", considered itself under attack of the homeland (ie a war zone in 2001) – making all its nuclear installations count? And all those in or near the countries bombed or invaded?

If not, we might still look at the map of atomic insanity to get a stricter measurement:

via Carbon Brief (https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-the-worlds-nuclear-power-plants)

And correlate the dates of construction and "connectedness to the grid" with the list armed conflicts

List of wars 1945–1989
List of wars 1990–2002
List of wars 2003–present

This is a bit misleading, as the map is not listing secret or formerly secret armament reactors, which all have to be count in.

For example the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center (aka "Dimona") was used by Israel to enrich enough fission material to construct bombs. This went online between 1962–1964 and obviously – that strip of land is awfully small – would be a quite vulnaerable target at least as early during 1973 Arab–Israeli War (Yom Kippur).

The same goes for India and Pakistan, at the latest in 1999, as India detonated "Smiling Buddha" in 1974 and Pakistan had equally enough installations to declare itself on-par with "Chagai-I" in 1998.

As the Korean War is not offically really "over", just being an armistice, one might just look at the surroundings of the peninsula:

This is further complicated as internal struggles and civil wars could very easily turn a bit ugly if the plants get targeted. As is the case with the conflicts in Ukraine, which make also some indisputably Russian reactors "near" a zone of conflict.

In the age of intercontinental missiles one has to count really every single last one of nuclear reactors near a potential war zone.

In recent years, we have added rhetoric of "heroic deeds being worthwhile", from quite a few sides. The means not only big rockets or errant shells are a threat. As those plants are at least quite dirty bombs in fixed positions, a small truck driven by one mad man or madam was and still is sufficient. Motivations for such an action are handed out by the dozens nowadays.

In fact some mad men are really convinced that connecting such things to "the grid" not only means simple powerlines, but electronic communications as well. Things like Stuxnet make the Vulnerability of nuclear plants to attack just so much easier, not even requiring any physical presence at all.

Military attacks

Nuclear reactors become preferred targets during military conflict and, over the past three decades, have been repeatedly attacked during military air strikes, occupations, invasions and campaigns:

• On 25 March 1973, before its completion, the Atucha I Nuclear Power Plant in Argentina was temporarily captured by the People's Revolutionary Army who stole a FMK-3 submachine gun and three .45 caliber handguns. When they retired they had a confrontation with the police, injuring two police officers.


• In September 1980, Iran bombed the Al Tuwaitha nuclear complex in Iraq, in Operation Scorch Sword, which was a surprise IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) airstrike carried out on 30 September 1980, that damaged an almost complete nuclear reactor 17 km south-east of Baghdad, Iraq.


• In June 1981, Operation Opera was an Israeli air strike that completely destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear research facility.


• Between 1984 and 1987, Iraq bombed Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant six times.


• In 1991, the U.S. bombed three nuclear reactors and an enrichment pilot facility in Iraq.


• In 1991, Iraq launched Scud missiles at Israel's Dimona nuclear power plant.


• In September 2007, Israel bombed a Syrian reactor under construction.

Given the expert opinion of Alexey Kovynev in Nuclear plants in war zones (2015), he also lists:

• Yugoslavia, ten-day war


• The Iran-Iraq war


• Bombing of nuclear reactors in Iraq


• Destruction of reactor in Syria


• Indo-Pakistani conflicts


• Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict


• Ukrainian conflict