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Ukrainian officials have been issuing warnings that Russia plans to blow up the
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant -- the largest nuclear plant in Europe -- for
months, but those warnings have escalated in recent days.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has even warned that Russia has placed
objects that could be explosives on the roof of the power plant. In an interview
with ABC News, Zelenskyy said Russia could stage an explosion at the
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to halt Ukrainian advances on the battlefield.

But experts say the cold shutdown of the plant's six reactors has largely curbed
much of the risk that could come from an explosion at the nuclear power plant.

"We're actually very, very lucky. Any incident would not involve an active
reactor, which could cause enormous environmental danger and damage and deaths,"
William Alberque, the director of strategy, technology and arms control at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, told ABC News.



MORE: Zelenskyy to ABC: Russia could sabotage nuclear power plant to halt
Ukrainian advances

Russian troops stormed and took control of the plant on March 4, 2022. Despite
Ukraine's energy company still operating the power plant, Russia has at times
limited access to parts of the plant, according to the International Atomic
Energy Agency.

Last October, the IAEA said there are mines along the perimeter of the
Zaporizhzhia power plant, but not inside it.

On Friday, IAEA experts at the site of the power plant were given additional
access to the plant and reported that they have not observed any visible
indications of mines or explosives, according to Director General Rafael Mariano
Grossi. But, the IAEA said the experts still need additional access to the
plant.




Alberque said that the IAEA has enough access to the plant to theoretically be
able to see if Russia was taking steps to blow up the plant from the inside.
However, he said warnings from Ukrainian officials should be taken seriously.



"Anytime [Ukraine and the U.S.] think that a false flag attack is going to
happen, they talk about it early, often and loudly. And this is, I think, an
attempt to deter Russia from doing something that they're concerned may happen,"
Alberque said.



Experts say the threat should be taken seriously.

"It is a real threat in the same way that the warnings of the mining of the
Kakhovka Dam turned out in the end to be realistic," Keir Giles, a senior
consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at London think tank
Chatham House, told ABC News last month. "And the advantage for Russia is that
it could create the kind of nuclear incident that would be seriously concerning
for not just Ukraine's western backers but the whole world without necessarily
incurring the consequences that a nuclear strike would."




HOW COULD RUSSIA BLOW UP THE PLANT?

Alberque said there are four areas in the plant that Russia could be planning to
attack: They could blow up the dry fuel storage, blow up the wet fuel storage,
blow up one of the reactor buildings itself or try to melt the nuclear fuel
that's still in the reactor.

"If they hit it from the outside and tried to say that Ukraine did it, they'd be
hitting a reactor building that's incredibly well reinforced. These are not the
RBMK reactors that Chernobyl was. These are DVRs, they have very big containment
on the outside -- lots of concrete. So you'd have to hit it with a lot of
weaponry in order to do any damage that's of any significance to chance
release," Alberque said.



MORE: Strategically vital Nova Khakovka dam blown up near border with Ukraine
and Russia-controlled Crimea

"None of these scenarios rise to the level of a Fukushima or Chernobyl,"
Alberque said, referring to two infamous meltdowns at nuclear power plants,
"unless they blow it up right from the inside and they guard it to make sure
that no one can do anything about it for a couple of weeks and the fuel builds
up and then explodes."



With the IAEA on site, Alberque said this is not currently a credible scenario.
Alberque said the IAEA is monitoring the reactors very closely and it is still a
fully functioning facility so it would be hard to plan such an explosion from
inside without IAEA's on-site team seeing it.

The least dangerous of the four scenarios, blowing up the dry fuel storage,
would impact people in the direct downwind, who would have an increased risk of
cancer in their lifetime, Alberque said.

The most dangerous scenario would be to blow up the reactor vessel inside the
building itself, Alberque said. This would be similar to what Russia did when it
blew up Kakhovka Dam, a strategically vital dam and hydroelectric power plant,
in June.




"You're not talking about opening a live reactor the way that Chernobyl was, but
you would be burning the fuel institute, probably in the hopes that it melts
through the floor and causes some Fukushima-type event. But that would take a
long time to occur," Alberque said.

Chernobyl, also a nuclear power plant in Ukraine, melted down in April 1986
during a safety test. The Fukushima meltdown took place in March 2011 when a
massive earthquake caused a tsunami that damaged the plant on the east coast of
Japan.




HOW DAMAGING COULD AN EXPLOSION OF THE PLANT BE?

Alberque said any explosion at Zaporizhzhia would be far less damaging than the
dam that was blown up by Russia last month.

"If something bad does happen, it's not even going to be as devastating as that
flood was. That flood was far more devastating, far bigger environmental impact,
far more deaths than anything that they could do with the reactor now," Alberque
said.

More than 100 people were killed when the dam in Kherson was blown up in late
June, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.



MORE: Zelenskyy to ABC: Russia could sabotage nuclear power plant to halt
Ukrainian advances

The American Nuclear Society released similar guidance, saying the reactors
being shutdown limits the risk of fallout from an explosion.   "Our experts have
carefully considered 'worst case scenarios,' including bombardment and
deliberate sabotage of the reactors and spent fuel storage canisters. They
cannot foresee a situation that would result in radiation-related health
consequences to the public," the American Nuclear Society said in a statement
this week.

The American Nuclear Society said with the reactors shutdown for over 10 months,
they are not making enough heat to prompt a radiological release.   "ZNPP is
designed to withstand natural and man-made hazards. Thick, steel-reinforced
concrete containment buildings protect the reactor cores and are designed to
keep any radioactive materials isolated from the environment," the American
Nuclear Society said.  




"In the unlikely event that containment structures were breached, any potential
release of radiological material would be restricted to the immediate area
surrounding the reactors. In this regard, any comparison between ZNPP and
'Chernobyl' or 'Fukushima' is both inaccurate and misleading," according to the
American Nuclear Society.

Alberque said people living within 20 miles of the reactor should be aware of
safety procedures. In the event of a warning that something has occurred, they
should go inside, close the windows and try to recirculate air from the inside.
Anyone who is outside should completely remove their clothes and completely wash
down everything as quickly as possible.

ABC News' Zoe Magee and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.




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SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – This week, it was revealed that the U.S. would
provide Ukraine with a controversial type of artillery called cluster munitions.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the decision was delayed as long as
possible.

What are these weapons and why are they so controversial? Thomas Henriksen,
Emeritus Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford University, joined
KCBS Radio to explain.



For more, stream KCBS Radio now.

He said that a cluster bomb is basically a large container of smaller bombs.

“The thing that makes them so controversial is all of them don’t necessarily
explode when they hit the enemy trenches,” said Henriksen. “So some are
scattered around – they could be there for years. And invariably, it’s
civilians,” that are killed by them.

In 2018, the Convention on Cluster Munitions was formed due to these concerns
about cluster bombs. Though 111 nations have joined the convention (including
much of Western Europe as well as Canada, Mexico and Australia) in agreeing not
to use cluster munitions, the U.S., Ukraine and Russia have not.

Indeed, since Russia began an invasion of Ukraine last February, Russian troops
have been utilizing cluster munitions. According to the Cluster Munition
Coalition’s August 2022 report, there had already been “extensive use of cluster
munitions by Russia,” leading to “hundreds of civilian casualties” as well as
property damage.




“Civilians remain the primary victims of cluster munitions at the time of the
attacks and after conflict has ended, with children particularly at risk,” said
the coalition. Sullivan said Friday that Russia has been using cluster munitions
with dud or failure rates of between 30% and 40%.



“In this environment, Ukraine has been requesting cluster munitions in order to
defend its own sovereign territory,” he said. “The cluster munitions that we
would provide have dud rates far below what Russia is doing – is providing – not
higher than 2.5%.”

KCBS Radio’s Brett Burkhart and Patti Reising asked Henriksen about the
strategic value of the U.S. providing Ukraine with cluster bombs in light of the
civilian casualties.

“The Russians, dating back from the Red Army to the Soviets right forward have
almost been masters of artillery,” he explained. “They use large numbers of
artillery. That’s how they beat the German army during the second World War. And
as a consequence, the Ukrainians don’t have the same ability. They don't have
the same number of artillery pieces. And so, as a substitute, they want these
cluster bombs so which they can rain down on the trenches and fortifications of
the Russian forces.”



Sullivan said that the U.S. is already planning to “assist Ukraine with
de-mining efforts no matter what,” since there will be remnants of Russia’s
cluster munitions to remove even if Ukraine never used them.

“There’s a certain desperate-ness to this… providing these cluster weapons,”
Henriksen said. “The United States and many people do not want to see Ukrainians
lose or even a stalemate.”

Sullivan said as much Friday when he addressed the issue.

“We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from
unexploded ordnance.  This is why we’ve deferred – deferred the decision for as
long as we could,” he said. “But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm
if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more
Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does
not have enough artillery. That is intolerable to us.”

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