Henry Sokolski
In future conflicts, Nuclear power reactors could make attractive military targets with dangerous repercussions.
With President Trump’s latest announcement that Iran’s centrifuges either will “blow up nicely in a deal” or “viciously without one,” the odds of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program just shot up. This raises the question: if negotiations in Oman this weekend fail, what might Israel or the United States target? Would they just hit the centrifuges? What of Iran’s large power reactor at Bushehr?
The conventional wisdom is no: that, in a shooting war, striking the reactor would harm not just Iran but our Persian Gulf friends. A less popular argument is that once the shooting goes large, hitting the reactor is a relatively minor event.
Both arguments are appealing. But are they correct? The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) decided to test them in two war games. What these games suggest is quite different than the conventional wisdom. Israel or the United States might well target Bushehr and that, if they hit the reactor, it would be far more than just an inconvenience.
The first game was set in 2037 in Eastern Europe. In the scenario, Ukraine’s electrical system included large U.S. and Russian reactors and smaller American modular plants. Beyond Ukraine, nearly 100 reactors—big and small, American and Russian—operated in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.
At the game’s start, Russia invaded Ukraine yet again. This time, instead of threatening nuclear use, the Kremlin attacked Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. This sent a clear message: If Moscow is willing to induce major radiological releases by attacking civil nuclear plants, NATO needed to worry all the more that Russia might use nuclear weapons next. The attacks resulted in a significant radiological release that drifted into NATO states. Russia then conducts missile strikes against the emergency diesel generators at Polish and Romanian nuclear power plants.
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