> power plant workers fleeing
That is an argument for no power plants with workers anywhere.
In WW2 dams were attacked causing lots of damage. I haven't seen anyone using that as an argument that we should demolish all hydro dams lest they become targets in a future war. Strangely this kind of thinking only applies to nuclear power.
You may find this bit of history interesting: https://www.rferl.org/a/european-remembrance-day-ukraine-lit...
Interesting question.
I think the answer is that Russia didn't plan to occupy the largest nuclear power plant in Europe; they occupied Ukrainian territory, and there was a NPP in it. I think it's inconvenient for them to have international inspectors paying attention to the ZNPP. It's right on the frontline; it's on the shore of this huge reservoir on the Dniepro, and Ukraine occupies the opposite shore.
Russia doesn't need the energy from ZNPP; if there's one thing they have plenty of, it's energy.
And for Ukraine's part, they are playing a slow game. I think it suits them that Russia has this inconvenience in the middle of their frontline.
For reactors that could be threatened, they should be "walk-away safe" and even more focused on recycling spent fuel so large quantities are not necessary to keep on hand.
The more likely scenario I would envision is that - under the guise of business "joint venture partnerships in next generation energy" - the technological know how and access to a steady stream of the requisite raw materials to build weapons will leak to more questionable parts of the world.
It's kind of like now that humans conquered polio and smallpox, the next challenge toward advancing the human race is ridding ourselves of cancer. If polio and smallpox returned, we'd be back to fighting those.
e.g. Here's a company that was licensed to build SMR (small modular reactors) last month that is designed to be underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power
not to mention, maybe the place you want to attack doesn't have a dam?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/world/europe/ukraine-cher...
> In a particularly ill-advised action, a Russian soldier from a chemical, biological and nuclear protection unit picked up a source of cobalt-60 at one waste storage site with his bare hands, exposing himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that it went off the scales of a Geiger counter, Mr. Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the man, he said.
> But in invisible hot spots, some covering an acre or two, some just a few square yards, radiation can soar to thousands of times normal ambient levels.
> A soldier in such a spot would be exposed every hour to what experts consider a safe limit for an entire year, said Mr. Chareyron, the nuclear expert. The most dangerous isotopes in the soil are Cesium 137, Strontium 90 and various isotopes of plutonium. Days or weeks spent in these areas bring a high risk of causing cancer, he said.
Fission waste is truly long term. Just like desertification.
I agree with you.