WASHINGTON — Russia’s seizure earlier this year of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy facility is shining a new light on the safety and security risks of the atomic export polices of the United States and other technologically advanced countries.
But the alarm bells that a handful of nuclear security experts are trying to raise about the broader policy implications for the scenario currently unfolding at Europe’s largest nuclear energy plant appear to be falling on deaf ears with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency and within the Biden administration and on Capitol Hill. That is even as ongoing fighting there is jeopardizing critical systems at Zaporizhzhia that are intended to prevent a radiological release.
“I think it certainly says we should think hard about exporting nuclear reactors to countries that might actually have ground wars in them,” said Alan Kuperman, who leads the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “Do you really want to be selling reactors to a country that has a decent chance of being in an air war? It’s just one more concern, you have economics, you have nonproliferation, and now you have this concern of safety from wartime attacks.”
