In future conflicts, Nuclear power reactors could make attractive military targets with dangerous repercussions.
With President Trump’s latest announcement that Iran’s centrifuges either will “blow up nicely in a deal” or “viciously without one,” the odds of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program just shot up. This raises the question: if negotiations in Oman this weekend fail, what might Israel or the United States target? Would they just hit the centrifuges? What of Iran’s large power reactor at Bushehr?
The conventional wisdom is no: that, in a shooting war, striking the reactor would harm not just Iran but our Persian Gulf friends. A less popular argument is that once the shooting goes large, hitting the reactor is a relatively minor event.
Both arguments are appealing. But are they correct? The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) decided to test them in two war games. What these games suggest is quite different than the conventional wisdom. Israel or the United States might well target Bushehr and that, if they hit the reactor, it would be far more than just an inconvenience.
The first game was set in 2037 in Eastern Europe. In the scenario, Ukraine’s electrical system included large U.S. and Russian reactors and smaller American modular plants. Beyond Ukraine, nearly 100 reactors—big and small, American and Russian—operated in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.
At the game’s start, Russia invaded Ukraine yet again. This time, instead of threatening nuclear use, the Kremlin attacked Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. This sent a clear message: If Moscow is willing to induce major radiological releases by attacking civil nuclear plants, NATO needed to worry all the more that Russia might use nuclear weapons next. The attacks resulted in a significant radiological release that drifted into NATO states. Russia then conducts missile strikes against the emergency diesel generators at Polish and Romanian nuclear power plants.
Key members of NATO characterized the attacks as “nuclear weapons use” and war crimes under Protocol I of the Geneva Convention. Washington refused to back these conclusions and remained silent. Poland and Ukraine, however, demanded NATO respond militarily. The United States then pushed back. When Ukraine and Poland proposed retaliating against a Russian strategic air base, the NATO team restrained Poland by invoking Article 5. The aim here was to keep Poland from acting unilaterally with Ukraine. Chagrined, Kyiv acted alone and launched a strike against a Russian strategic nuclear air base.
The second game was set in East Asia in 2026. In anticipation of a military assault on Taiwan, China wanted to tie down U.S., South Korean, and Japanese forces. To accomplish this, Beijing nudged North Korea to create chaos—specifically by targeting South Korea’s Kori nuclear plant. But instead of firing its own missiles across the demilitarized zone, North Korea recruited pro-confederation South Koreans to launch commercial drones locally at Kori’s spent fuel ponds.
The result? A massive radiological release. Prevailing winds carried fallout into Japan. Millions of civilians in both countries became refugees overnight. Separately, NPEC commissioned an analysis of similar attacks against Bushehr. The results were easily as dire.
The United States didn’t flinch from backing Taiwan first. As a message to Beijing, it struck North Korean targets immediately without consulting Seoul or Tokyo. South Korea, hoping for a joint response, was enraged. Japan questioned whether North Korea was even responsible. The result: Neither, when asked, was willing to assist Washington in repelling China’s advance on Taiwan.
The lesson in both these games is that power reactors in wars can make attractive military targets. Hitting them could derail alliances and disrupt military operations as much as hitting any military base.
Depending on whether Iran retaliates with a massive missile strike, as it has done before, what would Israel do next? It would be tempted to strike whatever nuclear targets, including Bushehr, are left. When you consider earlier fears that Iran might use this “peaceful” reactor to make weapons plutonium for bombs, this is not a remote prospect.
Still, no government—not in Washington, Kyiv, Seoul, or Tokyo—has publicly acknowledged these dangers. That’s a mistake.
America and its allies need to clarify what they’ve yet to discuss. What are the military vulnerabilities of large and small reactors? Is it wise to build more in the Middle East? Are there effective ways to actively and passively defend them? More organizations, in and out of government, need to game the answers.
It would help if the United States put someone in charge of answering these questions. One possibility is getting the National Nuclear Security Administration to realign some of its $2.3-billion-a-year Cooperative Threat Reduction and nonproliferation programs to this end.
In the wars ahead, there is no reason to think that nuclear plants won’t be off-limits. They’ll be targets of consequence.
About the Author: Henry Sokolski
Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, Virginia, served as Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy at the Pentagon (1989–93), and is the author of China, Russia, and the Coming Cool War (2024).
Image: Livek / Shutterstock.com.
