Last night, the Russian Army attacked the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Southern Ukraine. The fight was ongoing as of this writing. The Green New Deal War just got a lot worse. While the media coverage was rather hysterical, the media is missing the plot.

The first thing that you should know is that Vladimir Putin has added this to his war crimes. According to the Geneva Conventions on International Humanitarian Law Rule 42 it is a war crime to:

1. Works and installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. Other military objectives located at or in the vicinity of these works or installations shall not be made the object of attack if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces from the works or installations and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.

Now for some salient facts:

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is the largest power plant in Europe and supplies 25% of the energy that powers Ukraine. Three or four of the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia are currently operating. At the time of this writing, only administrative buildings are on fire. Word is that Russians are shelling the facilities with thermal imaging weaponry. It is unlikely that this could be a repeat of the Chernobyl disaster. Zaporizhzhia is an entirely different design than Chernobyl. Zaporizhzhia is a water cooled plant, where Chernobyl was a graphite reactor. I don’t understand any of that but found a good source:

n principle, a VVER reactor does not have so-called positive feedbacks, i.e. in the event of loss of coolant and loss of core cooling, the chain reaction of nuclear fuel combustion dies out, and does not accelerate, as in RBMK;
The VVER core does not contain a combustible substance (graphite), which in the RBMK core contains about 2 thousand tons;

The VVER reactor has a containment that prevents radioactivity from leaving the NPP even if the reactor vessel is destroyed; it is impossible to make a single protective cap for RBMK because of the large branching of the reactor circuit pipes.

The most important advantage of the VVER reactor is its great safety, the significance of which was fully realized, unfortunately, only after the Chernobyl disaster, although this was known long before it. And the fact that in the power industry of the same Russia RBMK power units have nevertheless become widespread is explained by the fact that before the commissioning of the Atommash plant in the late 70s, which produces VVER-type reactors, the USSR could produce only one vessel of such a reactor per year (at the Izhora plant). Now Russia produces only advanced VVER reactors. The pace of the Atommash plant has grown significantly and now it can produce from 4 to 8 reactors per year.

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The great safety of the Zaporizhzhia Power Plant is a reassurance to the world. Nuclear Power is the safest way to produce electricity. It is cleaner than coal and safer than water or coal.

Bear with me here. The video below is from Shepard Smith of CNBC. He speaks with a nuclear expert who warns what could happen if the Nuclear Power Plant is breached. The expert, Jeff Navin, makes the important point that it makes no sense for Putin to have his troops attack this plant:

I know this is disastrous situations, but I must admit I giggle snorted when Navin said the Creepy Joe Biden did the right thing by calling Ukraine’s President Zelensky. I am sure Zelensky felt reassured by the call from the nasty pudding brain.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has stated that there has been no change in radiation levels at the Nuclear Power Plant and:

#Ukraine tells IAEA that fire at site of #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected “essential” equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions.

— IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency (@iaeaorg) March 4, 2022

Since we have lost so much trust in governmental agencies, I don’t know how much trust we can have in the IAEA. So, let’s take one minute to discuss worse case scenarios. The New York Post reported:

“Russian army has opened fire on Zaporizhzhia NPP,” he tweeted. “No state except Russia has ever opened fire at nuclear power units. For the first time in human history, a terrorist state has resorted to nuclear terror. Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops”.

Firefighters could not access the scene of the potential catastrophic disaster because they were under attack from Russian troops that stormed Enerhodar, a city of 53,000 located about 400 miles southwest of Kyiv.

“We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire,” Andriy Tuz, spokesperson for the plant, said in a video posted on Telegram. “There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe.”

“If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl!,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned in a statement, referencing the 1986 Ukraine nuclear disaster that is considered the worst in world history.

And, Ukraine is West of Russia. The jet stream goes East so the nuclear fallout would go towards Russia. Yowza.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, the is where the New Green Deal gets us all. By not being energy independent, by not being an oil and gas exporter, we make the rest of the world vulnerable. Without the everything provided by energy, the world will freeze, overheat and starve. This war is the Green New Deal War.

***UPDATE***

The Russian forces are now in charge of the Nuclear Power Plant.

Featured Image: Screenshot of Twitter Video