Je me suis trompé deux fois dans mes analyses sur la guerre en cours. Une première fois au niveau stratégique, sur l’intention réelle de Vladimir Poutine, une seconde fois en estimant que la manœuvre opérative russe réussirait, même si cela ne signifiait pas la fin de la guerre.

Why a Nuclear power plant CANNOT be used as a war threat and how it COULD be used as a war threat.
Thread 1/n
 
 
First of all, you CANNOT have a reactor detonate like a bomb. It’s physically impossible. It would require a tamper to prevent thermal expansion of the Uranium and an enrichment level above 90%. Not gonna happen. 2/n
 
Your best hope would be to cause a meltdown and possibly a steam/hydrogen explosion. So let’s see how you can do that. 3/n
 
First and foremost, you cannot blow open a fissioning reactor core: there are passive safety systems now that will cause the reactor to SCRAM within a second from the vibration of the first bomb. But hey, you can still cause a meltdown thanks to decay heat. 4/n
 
In order to do that, you need to bomb down all the systems powering the primary cooling circuit of the reactor. Meaning, you have to take the power plant off the grid - that’s easy, just bomb down some power lines - and then turn off the emergency generators. 5/n
 
Taking down the emergency generators is not impossible, you just need to bomb down the conventional part of the plant. If you know where the diesel generators and the battery packs are located, it can save you some time, otherwise you’ll have to bomb it all down. 6/n
 
Now, within a second from the first bomb landing, the reactor will scram, but with no cooling, decay heat will eventually cause the fuel to melt down. However, passive heat removal systems still exist. 7/n
 
In particular, natural convection and the expansion of the pressurizer will prevent the fuel from melting from several hours, or event days, depending from the reactor. During this time you have to prevent enemy forces to reach the plant and turn back online the cooling. 8/n
 
Certain reactors, such as AP1000, have an additional passive cooling system that will have water fall from the roof and flood the room, removing heat for weeks, but let’s assume you choose a reactor without this feature. 9/n
 
Finally, the fuel begins to melt. But you still have a major problem: the core is located under the containment dome, which is made of heavily reinforced concrete and will safely contain all radiation inside. 10/n
 
The dome is made to withstand an aircraft impact and/or a bombing, so conventional warheads will not be enough to breach it: you’ll need a nuclear bomb or several anti-bunker warheads. But hey, you’re Russia, you can afford that. 11/n
 
Now you’ve finally spread radiation into the environment. Assuming you did your job well, now the target country will have to enact some relocation measure and distribute some iodine pills. 12/n
 
Nuclear plants are located at least a couple miles from the nearest town, and at least 20 miles from the next major city, so the evacuation measures will affect only a few thousand people, assuming we learned our lesson from the unnecessary evacuation in Fukushima. 13/n
 
If you manage to disrupt the evacuation and avoid the distribution of iodine pills, congratulations, you made it: you successfully spent some hundreds of millions of dollars to cause a moderate increase of thyroid cancer incidence in about a decade. 14/n
 
Given that thyroid cancer has a 99% survival rate, you may expect a jaw-dropping 10-15 deaths in 15-20 years from now. You could have obtained the same result by throwing a single warhead on a fucking city-center, but hey: achievement unlocked. Time to party at the Kremlin. 15/n
 
Can you see why this is not a great plan? Well, now I’m going to tell you why this is indeed the greatest move you can ever make in a war context, totally worth the economic and military effort: enter “THE GREENS”. 16/n
 
Imagine that before the war even started, you had agents spreading misinformation about nuclear plants, telling everyone that they’re basically sudo-bombs, that they can blow up at any moment, spreading radiation that could threaten the life of the whole human species. 17/n
 
Now, as soon as you start bombing the plant, the general population, who was victim of this heinous propaganda for years, starts to panic. Hundreds of thousand starts fleeing the city, causing massive jams. 18/n
 
An even higher number rush to the banks to withdraw all the cash they can. Soon banks runs out of cash. People start demanding the evacuation of the biggest cities; when the government doesn’t comply, they riot. 19/n
 
Supermaket and shops get looted, people die in the riots. Millions try to flee the country, causing a massive humanitarian crisis. Now the amount of chaos is enough to basically win you the war by itself. And there are two more good news. 20/n
 
First: you don’t even need to really cause a nuclear meltdown to achieve this result, if your agents did their job well enough. 21/n
 
Second: you don’t even need to pay any sleeper agent. They volunteer to do the job by themselves, because they’re fucking idiots.
22/
 
So yes, I’m going to say it once again: whoever is saying that the presence of nuclear plants in a war zone is “a threat for all Europe” is actively working for Putin, and should be arrested.
/END.