Originally Posted by
BANANASBANANAS
If 6 reactor cores are blown then, yes, I would agree. But Putin is sly and I would suspect something much smaller but which still carried a great threat and which Putin would then try to use as some form of negotiating lever.
Putin has all of the subtlety of a drunk robbing the NYPD Xmas Party.
Perhaps the UN is about to grow a pair.
Russia and nuclear safety are not words used often in the same sentence, except in The Simpson's. Playing about with HE within the confines of a PWR anywhere is not something that OH&S is going to be happy with.
My guess is that around 500 Russian conscripts are already destined to have lots of face time with their oncologists, until that doesn't help any more. Already, from digging foxholes in Chernobyl and cooking mushrooms up there. ZNPP coolant is critical to not having a corium event, which of course gets interesting downwind which covers a large amount of Russia, eastern Europe, and of course goes directly into the region that is proximate to... one of the major rivers flowing into the black sea, which flows into the Mediterranean. Say good bye to fishing for food that isn't self illuminated, forget grain exports from Ukraine and Russia for 10k years...
There is no design of a nuclear power plant that has safety from a sociopathic criminal. Well, there is, there is the PBMR/ Th type GCR etc, but anything with pressurised water as a coolant is not happy with being messed with. That it doesn't have an insane PVC as the RBMK1000 had is beside the point. They still have fuel rods clad with a wonderful source of hydrogen when overheated, so the potential for a rupture of the containment which they do actually have, is still very high.
Destroying ZNPP will put Putin into a special category of global criminal.
Consequences of that are catastrophic to food supplies in Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, contaminating the complete areas of the black and med seas, and depriving food to a substantial part of the world.
That this is a discussion item indicates how insane the actions of the Kremlin have been.
The Kremlin won't be getting an Xmas card from me I can jolly well assure!