Russia has put Europe's largest nuclear power plant in the cross hairs of combat, but it wasn't the first nation to attack an operational reactor. Three decades ago, that was the US. More than a dozen times, foreign attackers have fired on nuclear plants in Iraq, Iran, Israel, and Syria, as part of a little-known history. They wanted to end the atomic bomb program.
The history was divided into stages. Russian troops took control of the giant complex at the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukranian in March. The capture and ongoing fighting at the site have set off global alarm over the possibility of catastrophic damage.
The siege of the Zaporizhzhia site by Russia is the first of its kind in the history of warfare. Knowledge of the earlier strikes on nuclear reactor can help policymakers and the public better understand the rising dangers and ways to limit them.
Bennett Ramberg is a former State Department analyst and author of a 1984 book on the vulnerability of reactor in war. The scale of the current threat requires a renewed effort by the international community to establish legal prohibitions on striking reactor during military conflict and new physical protections for the atomic plants.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency spoke with the president of Ukraine about setting up a no-combat zone around the nuclear plant. For decades, the agency has discussed the possibility of creating a legal basis for such protective zones and is now looking for an ad hoc agreement in war-torn Ukranian. The head of the agency said there was a need for immediate action. If Russia and Ukraine can strike a deal, four agency experts arrived at the Ukrainian plant to assess the combat dangers.
Cities can be destroyed by nuclear reactor. Their importance in a war is that their fuel can be used to make bombs.
It was the reason for attacks on nuclear sites in the past. Saddam Hussein, the brutal leader of Iraq who rose to power in the 1970s, was the focus of combatants in the Middle East. Mr. Hussein said in a 1975 interview that a nuclear reactor purchase was the first step towards gaining nuclear arms.
In September 1980, two Iranian jets flew into Iraq, dropped low to avoid radar detection, and raced into position over an industrial fortress south of Baghdad. The Osirak reactor was under construction at the time. There were bombs falling. It was the first time a nuclear reactor had been attacked.
In June 1981 eight Israeli jets dropped bombs on the same reactor, increasing the degree of destruction.
The leader of Iraq wanted revenge on Iran. In 1984 he sent waves of Iraqi jets to destroy the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, an Iranian port city. Iran began to use nuclear power. Seven bombing runs were flown by Iraqi warplanes. The reactor was guarded by anti-aircraft guns.
The diplomats were horrified. binding international rules prohibiting armed attacks were called for in 1985. Washington didn't like what they saw.
Mr. Ramberg said that the US wanted a legal right to bomb the reactor. He said they wanted to retain this option.
During the opening hours of the Gulf War, the US exercised that option. There were two reactor targets.
Colin L. Powell said it was a huge blow against the threat of an Iraqi bomb. He told reporters that the two operating reactor were gone. The people are down. They're done.
The director of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington wondered if the nation's foes would retaliate after the strikes on the reactor. He asked, "How well protected our reactor are against such an attack?"
Israel was targeted when revenge came because it had supported the allied bombings. The heavily guarded heart of Israel's never-acknowledged nuclear arms program was hit by scud missiles from Iraq during the 1991 war.
The Iraqi missiles missed their target and crashed into the desert. They would have been the second attack on a reactor site.
Mr. Leventhal was concerned about enemy strikes on American nuclear power plants. Terrorists crashed passenger jets into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in 2001. According to the commission that investigated the attacks, the plotters had considered strikes on nuclear power plants.
It was a new idea. The terrorists wanted to spread their peaceful byproducts far and wide so that they could cause fuel meltdowns and release deadly radiation into the environment.
Henry D. Sokolski, a nuclear policy official in the Defense Department from 1989 to 1993 who now studies and writes about threats to the reactor, said that if you were hit near a populated area, you would have to evacuate for 20 or 30 years.
The reactor protections were meant to be expanded by the scare. The armed teams practiced. The federal overseers of the nation's power reactor rejected calls to strengthen their plants against jetliners.
The nuclear power industry fought hard to limit the protections, according to a nuclear power expert.
Israeli warplanes hit again in the Middle East. They bombed a site in Syria that was meant to make bomb fuel.
Analysts think the recent dramatic escalation in the reactor saga is a new turn. The goal is to steal energy fromUkraine.
There are no precedents in the action. Analysts say a working nuclear power plant has never been used as a military base or as a base of operations. In a report issued last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency used the term "unprecedented" five times.
The South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant, 160 miles west of Zaporizhzhia, was hit by a missile from Russia. The plant's three reactor were undamaged by the blast.
The head of the energy agency said in a statement that the attack showed the potential dangers for the other plants.
Jeffrey S. Merrifield, a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in an interview that Moscow was trying to get a geopolitical edge from the stolen atomic energy. He said that Russian officials wanted economic leverage. It's a terrible precedent.
The former State Department analyst hoped that the increase in atomic horror would prompt the United States to rethink its reactor- attack policy.
He said that it was time for new protection. Bombing a nuclear power plant is not justified. This should be established as a standard by the U.S.
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