Atomic blackmail: A little-recognised but urgent threat

On 6 June 2024, the free nations of the world marked the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings in Normandy that helped end the Second World War. Today, there is again war in Europe. Russia has invaded Ukraine—a democratic state seeking closer ties with the West.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine foregrounded a little-recognised but urgent threat to global security—that of atomic blackmail. The theory of atomic blackmail, developed by American foreign policy and nuclear expert Bennett Ramberg at the height of the Cold War, holds that nuclear facilities such as power stations, spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, and nuclear waste depositories act as potentially war-winning targets. The mechanism of atomic blackmail is simple: it involves the issuing of credible threats to damage or destroy one or more of an adversary’s nuclear facilities, for example, a nuclear plant or waste depository. Given the consequences of a successful attack on one or more nuclear facilities, for example, the rendering of large tracts of land uninhabitable and unproductive, the radioactive contamination of a large percentage of the population and chronic economic disruption, it is likely the issuing of such threats would deliver the aggressor’s objectives, such as the surrender of contested territory and a commitment by the blackmailed nation not to seek help from nations or alliances sympathetic to its plight. 

Atomic blackmail: The theory explained

Bennett Ramberg’s 1985 book Nuclear Power Plants: An Unrecognised Military Peril and the author’s 2023 book Atomic Blackmail? The weaponisation of nuclear facilities during the Russia-Ukraine War provided the nuclear industry and client states with means of calibrating the risks posed to nuclear power plants (NPPs) and connected installations such as spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants by, for example, armed conflict, terrorism, employee sabotage, operator error (induced by, for example, stress and fatigue) and supply-chain disruption.

The weaponisation of nuclear facilities during the Russia-Ukraine War provided the nuclear industry and client states with means of calibrating the risks posed to nuclear power plants (NPPs) and connected installations such as spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants by, for example, armed conflict.

In his 1985 book, Ramberg made several observations about NPPs and connected installations in time of war, including:

1. Threatening a state’s NPPs and connected installations may influence that state’s decision-making in ways favourable to the state that issued the threat
2. Bombing a state’s NPPs and connected installations may render large tracts of land uninhabitable and unproductive. Targeting a reactor containment with, for example, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or even crude, inexpensive glide bombs, could, if the containment was breached, create a radiological weapon or dirty bomb. Liberated radionuclides would be transported on the prevailing winds to neighbouring states (including the aggressor state)
3. Bombing a state’s NPPs and connected installations may kill or immobilise significant numbers of soldiers and civilians, furthering the aggressor state’s war aims
4. In an age of relatively cheap precision munitions (increased production lowers unit cost), powerful states’ ambitious nuclear power programmes (incentivised by the so-called ‘climate crisis’) gift leverage to weak states possessing small numbers of precision munitions
5. By threating nuclear facilities with a larger footprint than a reactor building, for example, nuclear waste storage ponds or marshalling yards hosting trains carrying reactor fuel or reactor waste, a state lacking precision munitions but possessing powerful glide or gravity bombs could still attempt atomic blackmail
6. NPPs are vulnerable to saboteurs. Special forces likely dropped in the vicinity of an NPP or other nuclear installation could, with the benefit of surprise, breach its perimeter security and damage either the installation itself or associated infrastructure such as waste stores or laboratories. Further, NPP employees sympathetic to the aggressor state’s war aims could wreak havoc from within by, for example, sabotaging reactor cooling systems, temperature alarms and reactor scram devices in the hope of causing a meltdown or steam explosion. The Reactor Number Four steam explosion at Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986 spread radionuclides across much of Europe causing, according to some experts, several thousand excess deaths and energising the anti-nuclear movement.

The Russia-Ukraine War through the atomic blackmail optic

While, to date, there has been no deliberate targeting of NPP reactor containments by either protagonist, NPP auxiliary buildings and soldiers guarding NPPs have been targeted. Both Russia and Ukraine have fired conventional munitions into NPP sites, albeit to kill enemy soldiers and disable auxiliary equipment. During the early stages of the war, the Russians fired conventional munitions into the decommissioned Chernobyl NPP complex. Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear plant in Europe, was targeted with suicide drones in early April, 2024. Fortunately, Zaporizhzhia’s reactor containments were not hit. Russia, which holds the NPP, blamed the attacks on Ukraine. Ukraine accused the Russians of mounting a false flag operation against the NPP. A false flag operation is one in which a protagonist seeks to implicate an opponent by killing its own personnel or damaging or destroying its own installations. 

Using munitions in proximity to Ukraine’s NPPs and other nuclear facilities such as laboratories and waste depositories is highly dangerous. It is axiomatic that munitions—even the costliest cutting-edge GPS-guided munitions such as Russia’s Kalibr cruise missile—are far from 100 percent accurate.

Using munitions in proximity to Ukraine’s NPPs and other nuclear facilities such as laboratories and waste depositories is highly dangerous. It is axiomatic that munitions—even the costliest cutting-edge GPS-guided munitions such as Russia’s Kalibr cruise missile—are far from 100 percent accurate. Power units (combustion, jet, or rocket engines) malfunction or run out of fuel. Guidance systems malfunction or are jammed by electronic countermeasures (ECM). Exhausted rocket troops mis-program guidance systems. Munitions are intercepted, generating shrapnel with high kinetic energy. Damage suffered by Ukraine’s towns and cities is frequently the result of the successful interception by Western-supplied air defence systems such as Germany’s lethal Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns and American Patriot surface-to-air missiles of Russian drones, cruise, and ballistic missiles.

Ukraine’s NPPs rely on the country’s high-voltage power grid for reactor cooling. Seeking to starve Ukraine’s nascent munitions industry of power and demoralise the victim country’s population, the Russians target Ukraine’s power grid. Russian attacks on Ukraine’s grid intensified in 2024. When the grid supply is disrupted, Ukraine’s NPPs fall back on their diesel generators—the NPPs’ last line of defence. The use of backup diesel generators worries Kyiv, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Ukraine’s neighbours. There is no backup for a NPP’s diesel generators. If they malfunction, run out of fuel, or are destroyed (either in an attack or via sabotage), reactor cooling is lost, raising the possibility of a meltdown. Attacks on Ukraine’s power grid spark furious exchanges between the protagonists, with Ukraine accusing Russia of targeting infrastructure critical to the safe operation of its NPPs and Russia accusing Ukraine of destroying its own pylons and sub-stations to cast Russia in a bad light. Ukraine’s NPPs have experienced near-misses. Munitions have detonated close to NPP reactor containments and NPPs have been overflown by Russian cruise and ballistic missiles. As mentioned, even the most sophisticated munitions can fail mid-flight, endangering whatever they are overflying at the time of the malfunction. A recent test-firing of Britain’s multi-billion pound Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system failed.

Ukraine’s NPPs rely on the country’s high-voltage power grid for reactor cooling. Seeking to starve Ukraine’s nascent munitions industry of power and demoralise the victim country’s population, the Russians target Ukraine’s power grid.

While it appears that, to date, NPP containments have not been targeted, Ukraine’s thermal power plants have been targeted. In the first half of 2024, Russia mounted frequent attacks on Ukraine’s numerous public and private thermal power plants causing extensive damage and obliging the authorities to introduce rolling blackouts. On 7 May 2024, for example, Russia launched circa 50 missiles and 20 drones at power stations in the Lviv, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions of Ukraine.

Conclusions and observations

Some countries, for example, the United Kingdom (UK) and France, frame nuclear power primarily as part of the solution to global warming. Other countries, for example, Japan, frame nuclear power primarily as a solution to the island nation’s age-old problem of energy insecurity. From time immemorial Japan’s Achilles Heel has been its fuel poverty. At the end of 2023, there were circa 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries (plus Taiwan). In 2022, nuclear reactors supplied roughly 10 percent of the world’s electricity. Over 60 reactors are under construction, with a further 110 planned. Most of the reactors planned or under construction are in the Asia-Pacific region. The more reactors there are, the more opportunities there are for atomic blackmail. That is, for aggressor states to secure their objectives by threatening the NPPs and associated nuclear facilities of states that stand in their way—states such as Ukraine. While this has not happened to date in the Russia-Ukraine War, it remains a possibility. The past is an unreliable guide to the future. Until recently, most informed observers considered a third major European war on the scale of the First and Second World Wars unlikely. Yet today, in the heart of Europe, Ukraine battles Russia in an ideological clash that could easily lead to a Third World War. The longer the Russia-Ukraine War lasts, the more opportunity there is for atomic blackmail and the realisation of Ramberg’s nightmare vision of states held to ransom gratis their investment in nuclear power. The possibility of atomic blackmail reframes NPPs from assets to liabilities.

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Simon Bennett teaches risk management at the University of Leicester, England.

• International Affairs
• Defence and Security
• Russia and Eurasia
• West Asia
• Atomic Blackmail
• Bennett Ramberg
• NPPs
• Nuclear Power Plants

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