Why civilian nuclear power is merely a cover for producing more nuclear weapons.
By Alfred Meyer, The Progressive Magazine
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeastern Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, has the world’s attention right now, and rightly so. For the first time in history, six nuclear reactors and thirty-seven years’ worth of high-level nuclear waste are in the middle of a battlefield in an active war zone—one artillery shell, on site or off, could interrupt the control and cooling of the operational reactor, or the cooling of the waste in storage, leading to a catastrophic release of radiation that could spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere. How in the world can nuclear power reactors be considered clean and safe sources of electricity?

Russia, a nuclear-armed nation that invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has said that it would use nuclear weapons if needed. And strong allies of Ukraine—the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, all NATO members—are also armed with nuclear weapons.
You likely are aware of what has happened in the weeks since this magazine went to press, and whether or not the world is in the midst of another major radioactive disaster, as happened at Fukushima in Japan in 2011, Chernobyl in northern Ukraine in 1986, and Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979. I assume that if you are reading this, nuclear weapons have not been used in the war in Ukraine. So how has the world ended up in such an existentially threatening situation? Why does the nuclear enterprise have the world’s future so tightly in its grip?
The short answer: nuclear weapons. It is all about the bomb.
Recent Posts
Billionaires Are Killing Our Democracy With Their Wealth Hoarding
December 4, 2023
Take Action Now The only way to steer American democracy to safety is to wrest money out of the claws of the wealthiest elites, who now control…
Is The West Deliberately Prolonging War In Ukraine?
December 4, 2023
Take Action Now Mounting evidence proves that we cannot believe anything our officials say about the futility of negotiations. by Branko…
Will COP28 Address Militarism’s Effect On The Climate?
December 2, 2023
Take Action Now As the earth approaches climate tipping points, world leaders must consider the world’s largest institutional emitter of fossil…
Call It Genocide, Pay The Price
December 1, 2023
Take Action Now Private colleges and employers can, and do, ignore the right to speak freely. By Bill Lueders, The Progressive A common…