Authors

Discussion

On 24 February 2022, Russian military vehicles were sighted at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) as the world quickly realised the severity of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On 4 March, fighting broke out around the Zaporizhzhia NPP between Russian and Ukrainian forces, ending in the occupation of this plant as well. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, has warned that those responsible for jeopardizing the safety and security of the NPP are ‘playing with fire.’ The primary question of this research is, ‘To what extent does Russia’s attack, occupation, and operation of the Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plants in Ukraine affect the global nuclear order?’ As such, the paper takes a deep dive into how the events unfolded, and in the case of Zaporizhzhia, continue to unfold, at the two nuclear power plants. The argument of the research is that these developments have challenged assumptions within the global nuclear order about the weaponization of civil nuclear sites and the possibility of state actors experienced in nuclear technology to hold a civil nuclear site hostage and continue to occupy and operate it in wartime. The accompanying presentation of this paper takes into consideration further developments, and their implications, that occurred from the time the paper was published in 2023 to present.