Today Putin’s Russia used a drone to hit the sarcophagus that covers seething nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, in Ukraine.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/europe/russia-ukraine-drones-chernobyl-intl-hnk/index.html

As of this writing, there has been no formal statement from the Russians.

But it really doesn’t matter:  this terrifying strike sends the world a clear message...in the age of drone warfare, any “Peaceful Atom” plant can be turned into a radioactive apocalypse at any time.

Chernobyl is not in a “hot” war zone.  Drone warfare has evolved into a highly sophisticated, carefully controlled nightmare with very advanced computerization.

https://progressive.org/latest/drones-nukes-and-the-myth-of-reactor-safety-wasserman-20250129/

Coming just after Putin spoke personally with Donald Trump, some may see this attack as a calling card.  Whatever the Russians say about it must be taken with many grains of plutonium. 

But it can easily be interpreted as a message to the Ukrainians, warning them that they—-and the rest of us—-can instantly be showered (again) by lethal radiation.  All it will take is a “errant” drone directed from Moscow.  

The four reactors at Chernobyl were built by the Soviets in the 1970s and 1980s.  Unit Four exploded on April 26, 1986.  

For decades the global nuclear industry had denied any civilian reactor could explode.  That disaster has been attributed structural and operator error.  

As radiation circled the planet, the US industry took pains to say that Chernobyl was an “inferior” Soviet reactor, but that those designed in the US could not explode.

Then, on March 11, 2011, three US-designed nukes at Fukushima, Japan, melted and exploded, followed by a fourth that blew up in a hydrogen explosion.  That Unit Four, which had been shut for refueling, barely avoided a fuel pool disaster whose radiation releases could have been gargantuan.  

Chernobyl’s radioactive cloud blanketed most of Europe.  It was detected at a bird sanctuary north of San Francisco within ten days.  It measurably circled the globe at least twice.  Three Russian scientists later estimated the human death toll at more than one million.  Residual fallout levels are still significant in much of Scandinavia and the Arctic circle.  

Putin’s army poured through the Chernobyl site early in its Ukrainian invasion.  Unit Four is still “hot,” demanding constant maintenance and cooling.  Russian invaders at Chernobyl ignited extreme tension with Ukrainian nuclear operators, seriously jeopardizing plant safety.

Indeed, Putin’s occupation has been fraught with atomic terror.  The Russians’ technical capabilities are questionable at best.  A European coalition has covered Chernobyl 4 with a $2 billion sarcophagus meant to contain leaks and any further explosions.  As of this morning, that’s what’s been newly “adorned” with a Russian drone. 

But eight other atomic reactors are now in the war zone, six at Zaporizhzhia, in Ukraine, two at Kursk, in Russia.  Three more lie dormant at Chernobyl.  Overall Ukraine has a total of 15.  There are more than 410 worldwide, including 92 in the US, many of them on earthquake faults.  

Mortar and other shells have been flying around Zapo and Kursk for a while now.  Chernobyl 4 is the world’s only nuke with a protective sarcophagus.  

But a guided (or mis-guided) drone could easily cause any atomic power plant to melt and/or explode.  

As of this writing, there has been no formal explanation from the Russians about how their drone wound up in apparent attack mode on the Chernobyl sarcophagus.

But whatever Putin says, what’s at stake here is no less than the ability of the human species to survive on this planet.

Chernobyl 4 is the only nuke on earth with a massive protective sarcophagus is not reassuring.  The other 400+ don’t have.  

The clear message is that atomic energy is not a sustainable technology.  In addition to its escalating costs, extreme heat emissions, “normal” chemical and radioactive fallout, climate threatening Carbon 14 and so much more, an actual reactor site has now been hit with an explosive device, in the midst of a war.

And in the age of drone warfare, they are all terrifyingly vulnerable to obliteration…either by accident or design.

Battery-backed renewables are now exponentially cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable and faster to build.  

No drone hitting a solar array will ever carpet the earth with lethal radiation.  

The nukes that could need to shut.  NOW.
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Harvey Wasserman wrote Solartopia!  Our Green-Powered Earth, & co-wrote Killing Our Own:  The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation.  Most Mondays he co-convenes the Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Zoom (www.grassrootsep.org)