[gizmo]

Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads. If they want to turn Ukraine into a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland they can do so today.

A nuclear plant getting bombed would result in some nuclear contamination but not _that_ much, and accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud. Taking a nuclear plant out of commission with bombs is easy, re-creating Chernobyl is very hard even if you bomb it intentionally.

Nuclear plants are not weapons of war and they serve no military purpose. The press has written repeatedly -- completely without basis in reality -- about Russia going to turn Ukrainian nuclear power plants into bombs. Nuclear feels scary to people, and that's why those narratives gain traction.

[cedws]

>Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads

Nuclear weapons are barely relevant to the conversation other than that they also use fissile material.

>accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud

Yes... as I stated.

>Nuclear plants are not weapons of war and they serve no military purpose

That's incorrect. Once again, the Zaporizhzhia NPP has played quite a large role in the war in that region. Whether Russia intends to do anything is irrelevant, the threat implicitly limits Ukraine's military response. The plant itself can, and has been used as a military outpost, shielded from intense bombing.

Not only all this, but the loss of the power plant to Russia meant Ukraine lost 20% of it's total electricity generation at all once[0]. From an energy security POV this is a disaster. This would not be possible with distributed wind turbines or solar arrays.

[0]: https://www.gem.wiki/Zaporizhzhia_nuclear_power_plant#Backgr...

[gizmo]

A nuclear power plant has strategic importance like an airport or a bridge.

Ukraine's military response is limited because the power plant is extremely valuable (monetarily as well as energy it produces) and they don't want to break it. But that's not what you argued.

I get the impression your argument changed from radiation risk to risk of electricity shortage. But if that is your concern you presumably would be fine with a country having many small nuclear reactors instead of a handful of large ones. But I suspect you'll change your argument again to make the case that small nuclear reactors are somehow bad, too.