Vladimir Putin is at the brink of igniting multiple global-scale atomic catastrophes at as many as 19 nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

Putin’s primary stated goal is to deprive Ukraine of electricity, freezing and starving it in the dark.

But as Newsweek has just reported: “The International Atomic Energy Agency said electrical substations ‘vital for nuclear safety’ were affected by the massive Russian strike on Ukraine overnight into Tuesday, leading the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to lose all of its off-site power. Other Ukrainian nuclear power plants were also impacted when their power lines were disrupted, the nuclear watchdog said.”

The article by Shane Croucher on January 20^th in Newsweek, based in the United States, continued: “The latest incident underlines the vast nuclear safety risks in the Ukraine war, with fighting around power stations and strikes on their vital infrastructure that threaten to cause a radiation leak or a reactor meltdown if there is a miscalculation, with potential ramifications for the whole world, as seen in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.”

The Kiev Independent, the English-language online newspaper in Ukraine, this past weekend ran an article headlined: “Russia seeks to disconnect Ukraine's nuclear power plants, HUR says, risking potential meltdown.” HUR is Ukraine’s military intelligence agency.

This article by Dominic Culverwell began: “Moscow is planning to strike substations connected to Ukraine’s three active nuclear plants in western and southern Ukraine to completely disconnect Ukrainians from heat and power, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) warned on Jan. 17.”

It went on: “Ukrainians across the country are already grappling with limited power and heating as Russia decimates Ukraine's energy facilities. But disconnecting its nuclear power plants would take the crisis one step further—Ukrainians would be fully cut off from electricity and heating in subzero temperatures.”

The piece said: “Russia's strategy is ‘to force Ukraine to accept unacceptable capitulation demands to end the war,’ HUR said. Already, the agency says Russia has conducted reconnaissance of ten critical energy substations in nine regions of Ukraine.”

The situation underscores the epic failure of nuclear energy as an energy source.

Putin’s immediate goal is to freeze and starve Ukraine. But in so doing he could—in a matter of hours if nuclear power plant meltdowns are triggered—blanket the region, all of Europe and much of the world in lethal radiation.

In addition to the four dead reactors at Chernobyl in Ukraine, there are fifteen atomic power plants at four sites in the country, with the capacity to supply half of its electricity. Six at Zaporizhia are in cold shut-down, but still require off-site power to heat the cores and spent fuel pools. Such explosions ripped four US-designed reactors at Fukushima to pieces in 2011. Huge quantities of radioactive liquid are still pouring from there into the Pacific Ocean.

The consequences of the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear power plant are detailed in the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, published by the New York Academy of Sciences and authored by a team of noted European scientists. It was led by the late Dr. Alexey Yablokov, environmental advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev and later Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Based on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports, some 5,000 in all, they concluded that as of 2004 some 985,000 people had already died as a result of radioactive fall-out from the Chernobyl plant explosion, most from cancer. More deaths, they projected, would follow.

After much of Europe was carpeted with lethal radiation from that disaster, European nations paid $2 billion for a giant sarcophagus to cover the seething Chernobyl core, which still leaks and could again explode.

Russian President Putin has denied responsibility for the February 14, 2025 strike that seriously compromised the safety of that sarcophagus. It may now be leaking radiation, and will cost millions to repair. However, when Putin invaded Ukraine, Russian troops poured through the site, terrorized Ukrainian safety operatives and brought the still volatile core to the brink of disaster.

Ukraine’s additional 15 reactors which Putin now threatens with attacks on power vital to their cores and fuel pool cooling systems could spew out multiple Chernobyl-level radioactive clouds.

Meanwhile, with a single drone Putin could at any time hit any of the 440 commercial reactors on this planet—including the 94 in the United States.

As at Chernobyl, a single radioactive eruption at any of them can cause a million or more human deaths and incalculable economic and ecological destruction. A strike at California’s Diablo Canyon reactors could send an apocalyptic cloud into Los Angeles within hours, threatening 10 million human lives along with property damage well into the trillions. Radioactive clouds blanketed the Pt. Reyes Bird Sanctuary near San Francisco ten days after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, followed by a catastrophic drop in bird births. They contaminated milk in New England, poisoned wildlife in northern Europe and Asia, and crossed the continental US at least twice.

Putin has thus cast his own lethal shadow over any possible justification for building a single additional atomic reactor—large or small—anywhere on this Earth.

A pioneer in addressing the potential for catastrophe involving nuclear power plants in a time of war has been Dr. Bennett Ramberg. As he wrote in his landmark 1985 book, Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, despite the “multiplication of nuclear power plants, little public consideration has been given to their vulnerability in time of war.”

Ramberg currently directs the Global Security Seminar, has taught at Princeton, Stanford and UCLA, and has been an analyst for organizations including the Nuclear Control Institute, Global Green and Committee to Bridge the Gap.

As the University of California Press, publisher of the book, describes a “terrifying new fact: a nation with nuclear power plants on its territory places weapons of potential mass destruction in the hands of its enemies. A major nuclear power station or waste storage reservation bombed…with conventional explosives--could contaminate thousands of square miles and cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives.”

“In this book,” the University of California Press continues, “Bennett Ramberg explains clearly, for both the lay reader and the technical community, the vulnerabilities of different sorts of nuclear facilities and lists reasons why they are likely to be destroyed in war.” It says “use of alternative forms of energy, and changes in international law could lessen these risks; but until the danger is recognized, no change is likely.”

Some four decades after the initial publication of Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, this gargantuan peril remains.

And, meanwhile, Ukraine has signed an agreement with Westinghouse to buy more nuclear power plants. “Ukraine had been receiving most of its nuclear services and nuclear

fuel from Russia, but is reducing this dependence…..An agreement to build nine AP1000 reactors at established sites has been signed with Westinghouse,” the World Nuclear Association reported in an “updated” posting on January 16, 2026 titled “Nuclear Power in Ukraine.”

Two Westinghouse nukes are now under construction in Ukraine. If they match the two just finished at Vogtle, Georgia, in the US, they could take 15 years to build and cost $35 billion, very far more expensive than the wind, solar, geothermal and battery facilitate that now constitute 90% of the world’s new electric generating capacity.

If finished, those nukes would be immediately as vulnerable to attack as the 19 today at Putin’s brink.

If Ukraine wants to survive, it must transition to 100% renewables as fast as possible.

While Trump hypes them, nuke reactors will always be money-losing pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction.

Will it take a new war-time atomic apocalypse and economic bankruptcy in Ukraine—and far beyond—to at long last make that clear?