The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is located in Ukraine. During the fighting around the plant, U.S. Command in Europe said it was assessing the potential health risks for U.S. forces along NATO’s eastern flank in the event of a catastrophe at the plant. (Ralf1969/Wikimedia Commons)
STUTTGART, Germany — Amid growing international fears of a widespread radiation hazard amid fighting near a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, U.S. Command Europe has announced that U.S. forces along NATO’s eastern flank should be reinforced. Assessing potential health risks.
EUCOM spokesman Chuck Pritchard said in a statement on Friday: “Personnel are trained and prepared for operations in a variety of environments, including health risk mitigation.” We will continue to closely monitor potential health risks that may be associated with the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant and respond appropriately.”
Pritchard details how the U.S. military has prepared and whether military personnel operating in Poland, the Baltics, Romania, etc. are being issued potassium iodine tablets as a precaution. I didn’t.
In 2011, such tablets were issued to Americans in Japan as a precautionary measure after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The tablets prevent radioactive iodine from entering the thyroid gland.
Concerns about a possible disaster at the Zaporizhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear facility, have increased recently amid Russian shelling in the region.
Concerns were heightened last week when Zaporizhzhia was temporarily cut off from the Ukrainian power grid for the first time, raising the risk of a nuclear meltdown if the plant’s cooling system fails.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in earnest in February, Russian troops occupied factories and Ukrainian workers continue to operate.
A major accident there would affect much of Europe. How the radioactive cloud spreads in the early stages of such a disaster depends on the weather conditions at the time.
Earlier this month, the Ukrainian Institute of Hydrometeorology released a map showing how such clouds spread westward, crossing Ukraine and reaching Poland, Latvia and Lithuania in a matter of days.
The United States will always have a combination of thousands of troops based in Poland and rotating units operating in the Baltics.
However, current weather conditions send such radiation in the opposite direction.
Ukraine’s energy agency, Energoatom, said on Sunday that if an accident were to occur today, a radioactive cloud would move southeast across southern Ukraine and into Russia, based on weather conditions expected from Monday to Wednesday. Told.
Bonnie Dennis Jenkins, the U.S. Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, said in a telephone call with reporters on Thursday that fighting near a nuclear power plant was unprecedented in history.
Russia’s actions “created a serious risk of a nuclear accident, a dangerous radiation release that could not only threaten the people and environment of Ukraine, but also affect neighboring countries and the international community as a whole,” she said. rice field.
