Although few noticed, last week’s bombardment of an auxiliary building at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine offered yet another glimpse into a future in which civilian nuclear plants might be hit in war. NPEC has focused on this prospect for some time.
Last month, the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s Radiological Emergency Preparedness Executive Education Program at the Naval Postgraduate School asked me to brief them on NPEC’s research. Attached is a video of the brief, “No Accident: Countering Military Assaults of Nuclear Plants,” broken into eight sections.
I argue that we need to focus at least as much on military assaults against nuclear plants as we do on nuclear accidents. Coping with nuclear accidents is a lesser proposition than dealing with military assaults against these plants. The brief explains why. It also makes two basic recommendations.
The first is to create a nuclear security initiative that builds on the current funding and staffing of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The second is for our government to be far less secretive about the military vulnerabilities of U.S. and allied civilian nuclear facilities.
As always, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the attached.
Henry S.
July 16, 2025
No Accident: Countering Military Assaults of Nuclear Plants
Part I. History of Military Strikes Against Nuclear Plants (0:00)
Part II. What do People Make of This History: Three Opinions (7:10)
Part III. Testing These Views: Two War Games (18:18)
Part IV. Game One: Ukraine War Redux Circa 2037 (20:49)
Part V. Game Two: Attacks on ROK Reactors Distract U.S. Allies in a Taiwan Crisis (31:31)
Part VI. Previous NPEC Analysis of Strikes Against Middle Eastern Nuclear Plants (36: 31)
Part VII. Should We Export the Nuclear Facilities That We Just Bombed in Iran? (41:52)
Part VIII. Recommendations (44:06)
To watch the full presentation, click here.