Good evening, viewers, and thank you for joining us. On this week's last segment, we are going to go over to Ukraine and talk about the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, once destroyed in the nineteen eighties, again apparently destroyed, and some of our panel members have different opinions about how dangerous it really is. But to take us away our very own Tracy Wilbert.
On April twenty sixth, nineteen eighty six, at one twenty three am local time, the number four reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, which was at the time in the USSR, exploded. There have been a number of documentaries and books and series on the event, which I encourage you all to look
into if you're interested. In December of the same year, work was completed on a sarcophagus of sorts intended to contain the spread of radioactive contamination from the site, and from twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen construction began and was completed on a massive Quanzit shaped containment vessel over reactor four, and on February fourteenth of this year, a Russia controlled drone struck that containment vessel with explosives, damaging the vessel and potentially endangering all of us.
This story is from.
Routers by Yuri Kovalenko on April thirteenth to twenty twenty five. I don't know how to say that word, right, That's why I said it.
Weird, ruders, rutiers, ruters. We got one of those, is right?
Yeah? Yeah, well we should just say it every way we can imagine, and then find out which one is right and clip that one and just play it with the video.
Nobody will beat, nobody will find out.
Yeah, nonethewise, anyway, thank you for that wonderful and insightful introduction. You know, I want to know how important is this really, Tracy? What are your thoughts on why this was struck on Valentine's Day of all places, of all days, by the way, but this being struck particularly, I think it's got I think it's got more impacts than just maybe a functional one. You know, what are your thoughts on why it was hit?
It's really hard to say.
It's really hard to say because I don't see any communication. I read the article, and I really didn't see any communication except for from you know, Mariah Zakaroka. She called the incident a provocation. I don't know what are they trying to do. They trying to you know, let out the radiation because if they breach that, if they breach the inner sarcophagus, then there is a threat of radioactive material being spread. Right now, just the damage to the
to the overarching container, it were really okay. But if they breached the inner sarcophagus that is basically just a whole bunch of plates on the actual reactor building itself, then then.
There's a there's a there's a threat.
There's you know, birds could come down and pick up some radioactive material, fly it somewhere, it could be blown away by the wind, it could be and then get into the rained on and get into the groundwater like that. I mean, there are subterranean defenses against that, but it is a provocation. It sort of shows to me that then they're gonna stop at nothing and get to get
their way and to get what they want. If that means they have to you know, spread radioactive material, then that's what they're gonna do.
And just to clarify for all of our viewers, Mariyah Zakarovka is a Russian politician serves as the director of Information and Press Department, So probably like our press secretary is, but the press secretary for the Ministry of Foreign to Foreign Affairs in Russia and so on that note. Yeah, I would say at first glance, this looks hazardous to me.
Chernobyl has been closed off since the nineteen eighties, regardless of the fact that the Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources in Ukraine by the name of Svitlana Krinchuk, says that you know, for many years the exclusion zone has needed to be transform formed into a zone of renewal and that this territory is like no other in
Ukraine and is suitable for developing renewable energy projects. I am, I having not that much background on nuclear energy and maybe the engineering that goes into a facility like this, is a little bit surprised to hear about this. And I know EJ wants to talk about it so bad, which is why I'm gonna go to Rob next, because I can see EJ squirming in his seat, cracking his neck, and I know that he's got a lot to say. So Rob, what what is the significance of this? Maybe
you know some of the details about it. They use the high explosive warhead was it necessary to hit this.
Who's right?
Is it Russia? Is it Ukraine? And what are your thoughts on this whole ordeal?
So I like, I like tangents, and then I'll loop back around, I promise, because it kind of reminds me of like anytime my dad and I would watch something and it's like finding Bigfoot, and they never do and because if they did, we'd hear about it in the news.
We are not being bombarded by constant warnings of imminent global destruction, so it's probably okay, but that's kind of not the point because it makes it honestly makes me think of domestic violence, where it's like if you punch a wall, what you're doing is you're demonstrating, not necessarily, you're demonstrating that you can be violent. It's kind of like putting your finger out and being like, I'm not touching you. Well, in this case, I did touch you,
but it was just for a second. Like it's the attack was intentional. I was actually really curious about that. The article didn't say, so I went out looking for another one and the New York Times said, quote the breach was also deliberate. They said that it punched right through at one fifty nine am on Friday by a Russian drone with a high explosive warhead. So it's just the attack was a message. They meant, They meant to
say something. It's the only thing this could mean, because otherwise they were, you know, hoping to actually cause Hadas traffic danger, which I really doubt they're trying to do because they're right next to the problem. So this is just uh, this is uh posturing and it's dangerous.
Yep, yep. I agree, And I think that you know, Russia in this conflict is trying to tell people, look, take us seriously, we will enact more dangerous attacks. This is just an example of one. And the reason why it can be perceived as dangerous is because so many of us who are used to hearing the age age old adage I guess, or the example of Chernobyl being a really dangerous place think automatically, WHOA, there was an
attack on it, we must be in grave danger. And I think most of the world thinks that, and Russia wants to be taken seriously. EJ. Without further ado, please talk to us about the attack on Chernobyl. He couldn't take it anymore. His head would explore.
You're not wrong that, so I want to say, don't panic. The new safe Containment Zone, the big arch that is over the sarcophagus and react of four was breached. However, it's not as bad as a lot of sites make out to be. As mentioned, the new safe Confinement Zone houses the sarcophagus, a heaping the hemuth of concrete and steel to shield the unit number four, which had unfortunately the biggest meltdown of a single nuclear reactor ever recorded.
Many would leave you to believe this is an unforeseen disaster, but it isn't. The NSSE has had protocols for a breach ever since it was constructed and even before. It's held under a negative pressure inside to avoid any particles leaving in case of a breach, and to further the issue, the inner containment so the NSC has two layers. Out of one was breached in a one wasn't, so there
is no threat of anything leaving as of yet. And the IEA, the Atomic the International Atomic Energy Agency, has continued to monitor both inside and outside and there's no spikes even minor in radiation levels beyond what is expected. At Chernobyl and the scientists who work inside the new Safe Containment Zone and the IE are supremely confident that
it won't fail. I feel we should be too, because as members of the public, we tend to freak out with nuclear energy a lot because of things like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushuma. In this case, I feel that the anxiety will do more than the attack did,
because it was most likely posturing. However, I would like to point out what you were saying about turning Chernobyl into a renewable energy site can be done and hopefully will once the war is over, so Chernobyl might be some hope for the future.
Well, I think that that statement is probably meant as a bit of a reassurance to people who are concerned over the attack on Chernobyl. Right for a leader to come out and say, hey, look, we can actually develop this land, like we are not concerned. The thing is, though, EJ, what you basically just laid out also states or gives
the idea that there could be potential for a worse fallout. Right, this attack didn't do anything, but a further attack, we don't know what the fallout for that could be, Right, And I think that Russia used the high explosive warhead because it sounds a hell of a lot more dangerous than let's say, a penetrator warhead, right, something that could have gone through the second layer and really done some damage, made a crater and really spread that nuclear material into
the atmosphere and deeper underground, affecting water sources, things like that. So I think Russia probably knew what it was doing, probably had ideas about the design of that facility, and said, hey, what can we do to put anxiety put fear into the global population, particularly the Ukrainians themselves, with out actually
doing anything. I know, a high explosive warhead. I remember, you know, being the former intelligence analyst that I am, being a young intelligence analyst in school and coming up with these concepts and then briefing them to my instructors and saying, hey, they used a high explosive warhead, thinking that that was so bad, and then my instructor saying, Okay, what's that mean, And I'd have to go, I don't know.
I think that most of the world is probably in an I don't know phase, and we're not really sure how to take this. We just think that we're supposed to take it really seriously, and I think that Russia succeeded there, and so on that note, I want to go back, you know, Tracy, I want to talk to you about, let's putting aside all of this messaging, maybe the psychological operations that the Russians are carrying out. What
do you think is happening here? I mean, according to what you discussed leading up to tonight's show, I see some thoughts that you have about it, and i'd like to know you know where you're at.
So we've been in there's this concept that everybody knows, not everybody, but you know, generally everybody knows about.
Called mutually assured destruction.
That's what keeps, you know, every the big countries from launching their their nuclear warheads, which is the idea that if one of us fires were all screwed, and that's kind of what I see is with with Ukraine, with the with Chernobyl, if they damage it significantly enough for it to matter, it's going to affect everybody within thousands of miles.
It's not just gonna affect them.
And so I find this to be a threat on par with threatening with sending an empty ICBM to just impact. You know, it's it's saying, hey, we didn't do anything this time, but I'm just showing you how willing I am to just screw everyone over to get my way. If I if I had my way, I would have called it a war crime. But I wasn't there for the Geneva Convention.
So Rob, on that note, please feel free to lay out any opinion you have thus far. But I would like to know, you know, being that we are the nonprofits, how does this relate to our mission here? Do you think that there could be a religious factor or maybe just a political one, or is it just a messaging factor? How do you think this falls into what we do here?
Well, I think like in the notes that I took for this, I talked about asaulting the earth, which is, you know, invading another land and then destroying it so thoroughly that if you don't annex it back then no one else can live there. And we live in a nuclear age, so it just seems like an extremely efficient way to salt the earth and utterly destroy your enemies
if you wish. However, it's kind of like a lame answer, but yes, there's religion attached to this just because most people are religious, and one of the primary conflicts that we ever had with Russia was ideologically capitalists versus communism, and thus fueled through the Christianity versus the Athesism, as we had talked about previously. So it's not really possible to talk about it without religion talking to informing that discussion a little bit, But it's primarily political. We don't
like what is happening. Is bad. War bad, I think is a pretty safe thing to say in general. So I think most people would say that violence in any circumstance can be justified given the circumstances that surround it. This doesn't exclude wars. There are wars for just reasons. This isn't necessarily one of them, or so clearly they'd need to do something. So using attacks as purely demonstrative ways of hey, look what we could do to you, as Tracy said, is in some ways to me, it's worse.
It's horrifying. Like it's not it's not just we're trying to achieve our goal of whatever the war is about. It's so much more insidious because there's messaging, and that's the thing that gets to me.
Yes, terrorism absolutely, So I want to I want to harp or harp on both of those things. So first of all, I want to give a tidbit of information about the religious aspect of how this conflict started. So the Russian Orthodox Church kind of has its I'm not an expert on it, so the terminology is going to be a little bit vague. But let's say is headquartered
in Moscow, which it is. I don't know if they have exactly a pope or they have some kind of higher person, right, but in the Russian Orthodox Church they have got they are the top of the hierarchy for their religion. Ukraine has its own Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but it used to prior to this war, next to the church in Moscow through a hierarchy, right, So it was Moscow and then.
It was Kiev.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church leading up to the war decided that they were no longer going to be aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church. So there was a schism and they separated. And that was a way of kind of discrediting Russia, discrediting the culture, the the overall society by pulling away and separating from it. And I think that that was a way of a justification for Russia to kind of come in and do what they did. And so I not a lot of people know that. I
think that's interesting. I don't know how impactful it actually was, but I think in this case, the Church did in Ukraine all that they could, and basically it was to pull away and then a war resulted. So you could tell the story certainly that way, but rob to your point and to the point that all I think all of us have made, you know, showing what they could do,
what they'd be willing to do. You know, this also leads to a desensitization, if you will, Like, if we see them attack a nuclear facility and nothing happens, maybe we'll think less of the next time they try to do that or carry out something a little bit more egregious or more dangerous, and we will be slower to act.
For example, the Zapharisia nuclear facility that has been a hotbed for conflict throughout this war, except the Russians have actually taken great steps to protect that facility and not damage it. And the sources for that are the BBC and the the the Center for Strategic and International Studies. If anybody wants to go look up that information. So on that note, and and EJ. With your love for all things nuclear. You know, what do you think about
Russia's position moving forward? You know, is this just an example of what they're willing to do? Uh? Can we expect? Do you think more of the same or worse?
So? Not particularly earlier nor a year and there was attacks on active nuclear power plants, and part of that was Ukraine was very good at taking out mid level leadership people like lieutenants and few officer ranks up from there. And because of that, we were seeing a lot of captured Russian orders. We were seeing a lot of things like, hey, disrupt the power, but no specific plan of how to
do that, so people were attacking plants. The thing people need to know about nuclear power plants is that they are designed for the worst case scenario. They are designed to contain explosions which we would struggle, we would struggle to replicate with conventional explosives. So even conventional missiles like health fires don't do anything to containment buildings. We've seen that in the war while one was being bombarded. So
Russia going after Chernobyl. I feel as in part structuring but also it may be them trying to say that, well, if we can't get your active ones, we'll get one that was that was disabled. However, they are also in their eagerness to show off how destructive they can be. They're also very much underestimating the staff at the nc NSC because the staff since the start of the war have prepared for something like this, and they have multiple stages in p place for breaches so that nothing is leaked.
And having seen interviews with them, they are more than willing to get dosed with radiation if it means protecting the environment and the locals who live near the the.
Well, EJ froze, but Tracy, you can go ahead and take over.
Well, I had a question for EJ. But or maybe it was just a comment. But I don't I don't know how good that's gonna do. If they just you know, boom the entire site, who's there to help?
If everybody is you.
Know ash like like that, that that that's my biggest concern. Because they're they're a very wealthy the company country. They can they can make the whole place a parking lot if they really wanted to.
Yeah, and that would that would uh that would require an escalation of force uh, an escalation of weapons weapons that they haven't demonstrated a use of yet in this conflict, and and that would change the game. I think that attacking Chernobyl, at least again in the minds of people, is probably an escalation for most of us, right or
most of the societies in the world. When they see Chernobyl being attacked, I think they say, Wow, this is an escalation, while while the Russians probably know this isn't quite an escalation, but it is a successful message. But yeah, I do think that they have the ability to definitely inflict more damage. And that's what's scary.
You know.
I don't know if this Chernobyl attack UH is a warning or if it's some kind of other play. I don't want to find out though. On that note, Rob, I'm gonna go ahead and and leave it to you to take us away before we wrap up.
No, that's that's definitely just kind of I'm at because, like we've talked about how it's posturing, how it's clearly a message, and that's it's that's the part where I just struggle for words, because it's they clearly did not mean to do more damage. So what did they mean? Yeah, it's just there's it's just questions. I genuinely wonder. I'm curious about what Ukraine and their people are being told and how they're handling it themselves, because they clearly are
far closer to it than we are. It's just it feels like it's left us with questions, which is the point. I guess sure here I am questioning.
Yeah, absolutely, you know EJ. While you were gone, Tracy had maybe a comment or a question for you, and Tracy, if you want real Wick to just kind of relay that to him.
Yeah, what what? What good are these measures?
Uh?
If everybody there gets suddenly turned.
To ash, So if it would take a hell of a strike to do that, we.
Talked about the need for a significant escalation of force in order to do that. So on that.
If somehow, let's say, a series of unfortunate events happened, and something happened in which all the workers inside the NSC were to perish in an attack, there is emergency fire crews who are trained to deal with breaches. In fact,
they responded to the initial breach. They are stationed on site and they have not only learned from what we do today with nuclear power plants, but they also learned from the initial nineteen eighty six tragedy, in which multiple fire crews, due to a lack of training and proper equipment, were a bit ineffective.
I just I guess my only concern is that I feel and maybe maybe I'm just coming from a position of emotion, which is entirely possible, but I just think that you're we're not dealing with a chimpanzee with an assault rifle. We're dealing with a Planet of the Apes chimpanzee with an assault rifle, like with a.
Nuclear weapon, with nuclear weapons.
Yeah, like like we're you saw how mean those chimpanzees and Planet of the Apes were, Like, come on.
We gotta we got to head this off. These people are dangerous and I'm not ready to deal with it.
I should say there should absolutely be more defenses around cher Nobyl MPP. I just do also want to re ensure people that it would take a lot of things going wrong at the same time for anything to pose a danger to the outside world. That's good, which hopefully doesn't happen.
So, speaking of defenses, I just want to leave our viewers with this, you know, if you were to and I have a military background, so I kind of know some of the key phrases to look for. But if you wanted to look up something called a disposition of forces on Google, the set the like I said, the CSIS, the Council of Foreign Relations is a good source. They have a global conflict tracker that tells you all about uh, you know, kind of the status of forces to the
max extent possible that they can. They can provide information. Uh. They they can show you maybe where some missile systems defensive systems are between the two countries, if you're interested in looking into maybe the status of the war. But yeah, the the CSI SU and the cf CFR dot org
are also good sources. And with that, you know, I would just say, on the on the the little factoid that I gave earlier about the schism between the Ukrainian Orthodox and the Russian Orthodox churches, I almost wonder if that schism never took place, you know, could they more successfully negotiate with each other. Could the soft power between these two diplomatic tools that the churches help quell this situation. I'm not so sure, but it's interesting to think about
and maybe worth some research. So I want to say thank you to everybody for joining us this week. We had a really eclectic mixture of topics and a lot of good discussions. I hope everybody enjoyed it. You enjoy the rest of your weekend, and make sure you keep tuning in to the nonprofits