Except that the radiation won’t just hover there - it will blow over Europe, and there has been some muttering that this might be considered an attack on NATO that would trigger Article 5.
I’m sure at the very least you’d see a European military response. Maybe not a full NATO just to try to hold the US out of a direct conflict. But it would also affect Russia. And I don’t see a ZNPP catastrophe happening.
The reactors aren’t running though and I believe at leadt 5/6 reactors have been shut down for months therefore minimal cooling is required and many of the most immediately dangerous radioactive isotopes have decayed (ie Iodine-131). To release the radioactive materials, you’d need to breach the containment vessel + building which in the case of ZNPP has as much as 10 meters of reinforced concrete, which would not be easy break with any type of conventional weapon.
With the units in extended cold shutdown, very little heat is generated from radioactive decay (<1% the heat compared to being operational) and losing circulation would probably not cause a meltdown leading to explosion and at worst might take quite some time to happen. But it’s more likely there would just be serious/irreparable damage and very limited contamination.
Fukashima basically took 3 days for meltdowns to occur after loss of power/cooling, leading to hydrogen explosions and the containment building explosions. Of course this was with mitigation efforts, but also countered by failed backups and failed fail-safe systems incl. cooling. And this was with the reactors operational up until about 1hr before power/cooling was lost.
As for the spent fuel ponds losing cooling, I suppose this depends on the design, amount of waste, and age, etc, but for Fukashemia it would have taken
weeks for the water to boil and boil off to level exposing spent fuel- at which point the spent fuel would likely combust spewing aerosolized radioactive waste (less immediately dangerous that that in a reactor).
In short- If Russia wanted to create a the biggest catastrophe as quickly as possible, they’d want all the reactors fully operational when the go to sabotage them.
What’s more, this plant is being monitored by the IAEA on the ground and remotely. If Russia was taking action to sabotage the plant for a slow melt down we’d have plenty of notice seeing it coming and they would be directly implicated.
The more likely scenario in my mind is that if Russian abandon the area, they will trash the other components of the power plant such as the turbines, generators, and transformers- rending the plant useless without creating an ecological disaster and international uproar. It would however likely take years to fix if that would even be financially worthwhile.
I don’t think Russia is stupid or crazy enough to use nukes, knowing it would surely involve an international military response and marring their reputation for eternity. Blowing up a nuclear plant would be just as bad, if not worse as dropping nukes.
authorities tested the Sovereign Internet system which led to disruptions of various websites & government infrastructure services …
