Notwithstanding the shelling, Ukrainian operators have continued working at the plant—often at gunpoint and under constant fear—“to make sure there is no Chernobyl-style disaster,” one of them told Reuters. Referring to the accrued risk of human error, Pasyuk said, “the plant’s staff has been working under stress for over five months, while [we know] human error is an important factor in nuclear accidents.”
Ewing echoed this view. “One cannot expect that the operating personnel, held as prisoners, will be able to meet the expected standard for the safe operation of the reactors,” Ewing said.
For his part, physicist Robert Rosner noted that an additional complicating factor is the presence of the fog of war, saying: “[M]y read is that neither side wants to disclose what’s actually going on: the West, because it’s helpful to blame the Russians for destructive actions at a nuclear site, the Russians because they are good at blaming the Ukrainians via their repeated ‘false flag’ actions.”
Rosner also noted that in his opinion, the real concerns come in two flavors: the stress of the nuclear power plant’s operating staff working under such conditions, and a simple military mistake. “The Russians have brought in quite a few poorly trained combat forces, and these have already demonstrated poor judgment, both in the early days of attacking the Zaporizhzhia power complex and their behavior at Chernobyl. In both cases, I think what happened was the result of poor command control, and in the context of an environment where a lot of highly radioactive material is stored in a relatively poorly protected manner, e.g., in the storage pools. That is very worrying—a mistake there could lead to a major radioactive material release. And that possibility is unfortunately the most likely, and most damaging, outcome of poor Russian command control.”
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