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It is actually deviously brilliant. No one wants to shell the area because it would release all the dust and radionuclides that were buried during the cleanup.

It is a perfect staging area because the downside to attacking it is so high. No allied forces in Europe want to deal with the fallout - literally.

This is so genius I'm genuinely in awe. This is right out of Sun Tzu: “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. ”

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Well he invented fighting, and he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honour.

Then he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on Earth, and then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the crap out of every single one...

And from that day forward, any time a bunch of animals are together in one place it's called a 'zoo'.

Unless it's a farm, of course.

I'm so confused by this comment... o_O

That's because we're engineers, and we solve problems.

Not problems like 'what is beauty' because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy.

We solve practical problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h42d0WHRSck

Unless they're literally housed inside the containment building, this is useless against precision guided missiles and bombs. Are you talking about deterrence to nuclear bombing of Chernobyl? Then it is a moot point because the fallout from the weapon itself would dwarf the dormant fissile material in the containment facility.

Sorry, but this makes no sense. If Russia wants to deter EU with fallout, they already have such a mechanism - their massive stockpile of nuclear weapons to deter aggression by EU.

I would imagine that even a small conventional bomb landing anywhere within a few miles of Chernobyl would unearth and spread contamination.

I remember reading somewhere that all the ground was full of small radioactive particles in the area surrounding Chernobyl. So basically what they had to do was dig up the first few feet of dirt and flip it over, burying the contaminated dirt. Any small bomb would undo that. Then the wind would carry it and we'd have a whole mess.

No this doesn't have anything to do with Nuclear Weapon deterrence. Much of the liquidation effort was literally burying contaminated topsoil in the area. The explosions from conventional bombs would kick radioactive particles back up into the atmosphere. Europe probably does not want to deal with that, so I imagine they will refrain from attacking directly.

If I understand correctly, your central thesis is about deterring EU from attacking. It misses the point that Russia already has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons to deter EU from attacking them. So, why would they rely on an 'offchance' 2nd-hand threat of fallout when they can just threaten to use their guaranteed-to-deter stockpile of weapons?

I think I'm using "Allied Forces" and "Europeans" too loosely. I was lumping Ukrainian forces into that label. They're already under attack so any conventional retaliation on invading forces is already a given. I'm basically saying that NATO/EU would put pressure on Ukraine NOT to attack the staging area because any fallout could waft over into Western Europe. This is in addition to the already present downside of Ukraine re-contaminating their own backyard.

I see, it’s an important distinction. I would agree, Ukrainian military would face some deterrence.

I think the thesis is to prevent Ukraine from attacking the staging area. Giving them a really safe base.

I think a nuclear bomb and a nuclear power plant are very different and have different halftimes.

Halflife is the word you're looking for, but they're not so different in terms of halflife. Although a nuclear bomb would be way worse.

If that is true, then every explosion contaminates the vehicles and personnel staged in the immediate vicinity. Doesn't sound so brilliant to me.

True, but the Russians are also counting on the idea that Ukrainian forces do not want to release that fallout back on to their own territory and that European forces do not want radioactive particles wafting back over into continental Europe.

Russia has calculated that while an attack would be bad for the Russian forces at Chernobyl, it would actually be much worse for the allied forces.

> True, but the Russians are also counting on the idea that Ukrainian forces do not want to release that fallout back on to their own territory

Unless there is no Ukraine. Blowing it up is the closest thing Ukraine has to a nuke and it would take out any troops stationed there. It would be a horrific thing to do though and I don't think the Ukrainian leadership has the demeanor to do it.

Russian military generally played wars with an assumed unit cost of approximately zero. They still appear to do so, despite the declining birth rate (there's a reason russian roulette is called as it is)

Have they gotten dedovschina under control yet?

Chernobyl sarcophagus is a massive pile of concrete - basically indestructible. Buildings made of concrete are ridiculously resilient to explosions - remember the Beirut explosion? That grain silo right next to the epicenter was still standing

Berlin has some flak towers from WW2, quoting Wikipedia:

The Soviets, in their assault on Berlin, found it difficult to inflict significant damage on the flak towers, even with some of the largest Soviet guns, such as the 203 mm M1931 howitzers. After the war, the demolition of the towers was often considered not feasible and many remain to this day

Chernobyl's containment is not massive concrete, and cannot sustain a hit from a bomb in any way. The new safe containment structure is metal and air, it's meant to contain dust as the reactor building inside is dismantled. Watch this to learn all about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdnutU2m71o

The old sarcophagus that was build in 1986 only had concrete walls in a few key places. Much of it had huge holes and open areas covered in sheet metal. All of it was falling apart and rapidly deteriorating when construction on new safe containment started.

And remember there are 3 other reactor buildings at the site and none of them are covered by the containment structure or really any protection (Chernobyl's Soviet era design which lacks a concrete containment structure is partly why its meltdown was so catastrophic). The site cannot withstand any attack.

> Chernobyl sarcophagus is a massive pile of concrete - basically indestructible.

This is such an hilariously uneducated take that it has to be trolling.

Let's set aside the facts that the sarcophagus' 20-30 year estimated lifetime has already expired, and has previously partially collapsed, and has had to be replaced by the New Safe Confinement structure. A stray artillery shell will tear apart any 36 year old building that was structurally weakened by an explosion, concrete or not.

While the Sarcophagus and New Safe Confinement structure around the reactor contains the worst of the fallout, most of the contamination in the surrounding area was simply buried underground using bulldozers and earth-moving equipment. Explosions risk kicking up that contamination from the soil.

You underestimate the amount of nuclear material that's still in the ground around there. Vaporizing that isn't a great idea.

This is wrong on so many levels, it's almost right again.

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