Amsterdam, Netherlands – The extent of the nuclear threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine is unprecedented, new Greenpeace International mapping and technical analysis shows.
Created with data from the Institute for the Study of War and the Centre for Information Resilience among others, and displaying the proximity of Russian troops and military hardware to each of Ukraine’s 15 commercial nuclear reactors over time, time, the interactive map providess a chilling interactive visualisation of the potential for nuclear catastrophe at regular intervals since the bloody invasion began on February 24.
Meanwhile, the new analysis of Yuzhnoukrainsk (South Ukraine) nuclear power plant, which generates on average 10% of Ukraine’s electricity, shows that existing risks of a severe incident at these nuclear plants have exponentially increased as a consequence of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.
Co-author of the new analysis and Greenpeace East Asia senior nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie said:
“An attack and seizure of the Yuzhnoukrainsk reactors, as with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in early March, would give the Russian military control of the electricity supply of southern Ukraine and major leverage over the Ukrainian government. In trying to seize the reactors, the Russian military exponentially increases the risks of a severe accident: damage to the external electricity grid supply and loss of power to an operating nuclear reactor site, either as a result of a direct attack or elsewhere in the region, has the potential to lead to a major release of radioactivity into the environment.”
