Why could bombing Iran’s nuclear power plant cause an environmental disaster?
An attack on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant could release long-lasting radioactive cesium 137 into the Persian Gulf, causing an environmental disaster and endangering drinking water supplies for millions of people.
A view of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, the country’s only nuclear power plant, in Bushehr, Iran, on April 28, 2024.
Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images
Iran’s coastal city of Bushehr is home to the country’s only nuclear power plant, just steps from the Persian Gulf. Although a fragile ceasefire implemented on April 7 stopped Iran’s bombing, the plant was hit four times by nearby missile attacks during the conflict, with one attack killing a security guard and damaging an outbuilding.
Experts are worried about the possibility of war resuming. The damage to the Bushehr nuclear power plant could release long-lived radioactive cesium 137 from fuel storage ponds in the Persian Gulf, threatening fisheries and drinking water supplies for millions of people. A direct attack could lead to a nuclear meltdown. Such a meltdown is unlikely to lead to a raging Chernobyl-style catastrophe, but it could lead to a slow-moving environmental disaster, says Ali Alkis, a nuclear safety expert and doctoral student at Hacettepe University in Turkey.
“The most realistic path to a serious accident is not a Hollywood-style explosion, but a loss of coolness over time,” says Alkis. “If both external power and backup systems are compromised, the reactor core could overheat, potentially leading to fuel damage or meltdown.”
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The Bushehr plant has been in operation since 2011 and consists of one operational Russian-designed VVER V-446 reactor with a net capacity of 915 megawatts of electricity, about 2 percent of Iran’s electricity.
On March 22, US Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz refused to promise that the US would not target the plant, saying, “All options should be on the table.” President Donald Trump had repeatedly threatened to bomb all of Iran’s power plants if it did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic.
The Bushehr reactor is contained in a reinforced concrete-and-steel liner and has multiple fallback cooling systems to prevent the core from overheating. If it overheats, the nuclear fuel could melt, potentially causing radioactive material to breach the containment system. Spent fuel is also stored in cooling ponds within the reactor, says Scott Roecker, vice president of nuclear materials security at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. If these cooling ponds were breached, they could also overheat and cause a widespread meltdown that could release radioactive material into the air or the Persian Gulf.
“This is basically what happened with Fukushima, where they lost power and then got a cold snap, and they got into a meltdown,” Roecker says.
Cesium 137 is a contaminant of particular concern in spent fuel because it emits strong and dangerous gamma radiation. Alkis says cesium 137 is highly soluble in water and has a half-life of 30 years. Spent fuel ponds in Bushehr have long been a concern 2021 paper It was found that spent fuel fires there could spread radioactive pollution to the surrounding coastline, including the city of Ahvaz, which has a population of about 1.3 million.
Another matter of concern is the threat of water pollution. Because many Gulf countries depend on sea water desalination for their drinking water, any radioactive contamination of the Persian Gulf could lead to an immediate water crisis. Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani Said in an interview last year If the Gulf is polluted by a nuclear accident, Qatar will run out of water in three days. Cesium can be removed from waterHowever, with methods like reverse osmosis. This technology was used in the cleanup after the Fukushima accident, so desalination systems may be able to handle the contamination.
Roecker says that regardless of the outcome in Bushehr, protecting nuclear power plants in war may become more pressing as countries seek to expand nuclear power to meet climate goals. This is not the first time in recent years that an active nuclear plant has been caught in the crossfire: the Russian seizure of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant in 2022 raised a similar threat of a catastrophic accident. “Unfortunately, the Ukraine precedent makes clear that there are not a lot of rules when it comes to attacking nuclear power plants in wartime,” says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear energy safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Beyond the Iran conflict, he says, it is dangerous to have nuclear power plants as military targets. He said adversaries may try to target the infrastructure around the plants to prevent them from delivering power or even force them to cease operations. “This kind of instability increases the risk of a crash,” says Lyman.
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