Why nuclear is no game · 1
On 20 August the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in Ukraine, lost the last power line connecting it to the grid. For eighteen days its cooling ran on diesel generators. The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, warned of a possible station blackout, with diesel reserves running down. Power came back on the evening of 8 September, after three days of repairs carried out during a local ceasefire. It was the seventh the Agency has brokered between Moscow and Kyiv since the war began.
The six reactors, of the VVER-1000 type, have been in cold shutdown since 15 April 2024. Shut down does not mean inert. The fuel, in the core and in the pools, keeps producing heat as its fission products decay, and that heat is carried away by pumps that run on electricity. By the World Nuclear Association’s count, the plant has lost all external power twenty-six times since 2022.
Russian troops occupied the plant on 4 March 2022. On 30 May 2023 Grossi put five principles to the UN Security Council: no attack from or against the plant, no heavy weapons on site, no risk to the external power lines, essential systems protected from attack and sabotage, no action that undermines these rules. International law already contains them. Article 56 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, of 1977, forbids attacks on nuclear power stations when the attack may release dangerous forces and cause severe losses among civilians, even if they are military objectives. The protection ends only if the plant gives regular, significant and direct support to military operations.
Zaporizhzhia is not alone. On 14 February 2025 a drone struck the New Safe Confinement at Chernobyl, the steel shelter over the remains of reactor 4. It opened a hole about six metres across in the outer and inner cladding. An assessment in May counted about 330 openings, 30 to 50 centimetres wide, over some two hundred square metres. Radiation stayed stable. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which attributes the drone to Russia, puts the repair at no less than five hundred million euros, to restore full function by 2030. On 1 April 2026 donors approved thirty million for engineering work. Italy is among the fund’s donors. In Iran, on 4 April 2026, a projectile fell near the Bushehr plant. It was the fourth incident in a few weeks, and it killed a physical protection officer. There too, radiation did not rise.
The enabling law on sustainable nuclear energy passed its final vote in the Italian Senate on 23 September, by 81 votes to 51 with 7 abstentions, according to news agency reports. The government has twelve months to issue decrees on sites, licensing, safety oversight, fuel fabrication and reprocessing, waste and decommissioning. Protection against sabotage already has an international rule. The 2005 amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, in force since May 2016, extends protection to facilities and makes sabotage an offence.
Fuel leaves a residue, and war has already used it. To make fuel, uranium is enriched: the share of uranium-235, the isotope that splits in the reactor, is raised. Natural uranium contains 0.72 per cent of it. What remains after enrichment contains 0.2 to 0.3 per cent: this is depleted uranium. According to the IAEA it has about sixty per cent of the radioactivity of natural uranium. It is a very heavy metal, and for this reason it goes into armour-piercing rounds. When it strikes a hard target, 10 to 35 per cent of the round, and up to 70, ignites and turns to dust. The main hazard is chemical: as with other heavy metals, the target organ is the kidney. It becomes radiological too if the dust is breathed in, because insoluble oxides can stay in the lungs for up to sixteen years.
NATO used it in the Balkans, with the 30 millimetre cannon of A-10 aircraft. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1994 and 1995, about three tonnes, according to the Alliance itself. In Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, in 1999, about thirty-one thousand rounds, some ten tonnes. The United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, went to measure. In Kosovo, in 2001, it found no widespread contamination of the ground: the uranium lay within a few metres of the rounds, and the risk was judged insignificant. It did recommend checking the groundwater used for drinking. In Bosnia, in 2003, it found close to three hundred contamination points and, for the first time, depleted uranium in the groundwater at Hadžići, at low concentrations.
Tens of thousands of Italian soldiers served on those missions. The Ministry of Defence entrusted the question to a scientific commission, known as the Mandelli commission. Its results were summarised in 2003 in the Notiziario dell’Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the bulletin of Italy’s National Institute of Health. Among 43,058 soldiers sent to Bosnia and Kosovo between December 1995 and November 2001, the commission counted 12 cases of Hodgkin lymphoma, against 5.08 expected from Italian population rates. The ratio of observed to expected cases was 2.36. The 95 per cent confidence interval, the range in which the true value very probably lies, ran from 1.22 to 4.13: all above one, so a real excess. It was the only significant excess. A link with internal exposure to uranium, the commission concluded, had not been demonstrated.
Hodgkin lymphoma in Italian soldiers deployed to the Balkans: observed cases divided by expected cases, with 95 per cent confidence interval. In red, the excess of new cases found by the Mandelli commission; in blue and grey, hospital admissions and deaths in the study by De Angelis and colleagues. The three measures are not the same thing: new diagnoses, admissions and deaths, over different periods. Chart produced by ScienceOnline from data in Grandolfo et al., Notiziario ISS 2003, and De Angelis et al., Frontiers in Public Health 2025.
The longest study appeared in September 2025 in Frontiers in Public Health. De Angelis and fourteen co-authors, funded by the Italian Ministry of Health, linked the records of 71,042 soldiers deployed to the Balkans between 1995 and 2004 to national mortality and hospital data. Between 1999 and 2018, 894 of them died, against 1,969 expected from the Italian population. Cancer killed 336, against 605 expected. For Hodgkin lymphoma, there were 5 deaths against 6 expected, and between 2005 and 2018, 33 hospital admissions against 53.
Those low figures have a known explanation, and the authors state it. Soldiers are a selected population: they enter service healthy and fit. This is called the healthy soldier effect. Comparing them with the Carabinieri, used as a control group, narrows the gap but does not close it: the veterans’ mortality is still 0.76 times theirs. Two cancers show an excess in hospital admissions: thyroid, 142 cases against 102 expected, and melanoma, 94 against 71. The authors attribute them to more intensive surveillance, which finds small tumours that might never have caused disease, and for melanoma also to sun exposure on duty. The limitations are stated. The study does not measure exposure to uranium, Italy has no national cancer registry, and hospital admissions are followed only from 2005. The conclusion is that the data do not point to specific long-term risks linked to the Balkan missions.
The courts have used a different yardstick. In 2008 the Italian Senate’s commission of inquiry chaired by Lidia Menapace wrote that a direct cause-and-effect link could not be established, and proposed a probability criterion for compensation. The Ministry of Defence had reported to it 312 malignant tumours and 77 deaths among personnel from four theatres of operation, from 1996 to 2006. In February 2018 the latest commission of inquiry, in the Chamber of Deputies, wrote that numerous rulings had recognised the link between unprotected exposure to depleted uranium and cancer. The judges’ test is “more probable than not”. It serves to decide who pays for a harm, not to establish what caused it biologically. The two must be kept apart.
In Ukraine depleted uranium returned in 2023. On 20 March the British government confirmed to the House of Lords that, with its Challenger 2 tanks, it would supply armour-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium. The answer spoke of their effectiveness against modern tanks, not of the risks. UNEP, which measured the Balkans, reports no measurements from Ukraine on its depleted uranium page.
After Bushehr, Grossi said that nuclear power plants and the areas near them must never be attacked. On 20 August, at Zaporizhzhia, a single power line remained. That one went too.
Caption · goes in the photo field, not in the text
References
De Angelis R., Rossi S., Bugani M., Autore A., Lastilla M., Vento R., Rocchetti A., Guzzinati S., Vicentini M., Manno V., Spizzichino L., Battilomo S., Belmonte S., Biffoni M., Piciocchi A., «Long-term mortality and hospitalisation among Italian veterans deployed to the Balkans: a retrospective longitudinal study based on individual linkage with national health data», Frontiers in Public Health 13: 1605457, 19 September 2025, CC BY. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2025.1605457
Grandolfo M., Mele A., Ferrigno L., Nuccetelli C., Risica S., Tosti M. E., «Uranio impoverito e linfomi di Hodgkin nei soldati italiani in Bosnia e Kosovo: una possibile associazione?», Notiziario dell’Istituto Superiore di Sanità 16 (7/8): 3–11, 2003. iss.it
UNEP, «Depleted Uranium in Kosovo: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment», Geneva, March 2001. wedocs.unep.org
UNEP, «Depleted Uranium in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment», 2003. iaea.org
Bleise A., Danesi P. R., Burkart W., «Properties, use and health effects of depleted uranium (DU): a general overview», Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 64: 93–112, 2003. iaea.org
IAEA, «Depleted uranium», topic page. iaea.org
NATO, press briefing on depleted uranium, 10 January 2001. nato.int
Group of Experts under Article 31 of the Euratom Treaty, opinion on depleted uranium, 6 March 2001. nato.int
Senato della Repubblica, XV legislatura, Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sui casi di morte e gravi malattie che hanno colpito il personale italiano impiegato in missioni militari all’estero (presidente Lidia Menapace), Relazione finale, Doc. XXII-bis n. 2, 12 February 2008. senato.it
Camera dei deputati, XVII legislatura, Commissione parlamentare di inchiesta sull’uranio impoverito (presidente Gian Piero Scanu), Relazione sull’attività svolta, Doc. XXII-bis n. 23, 7 February 2018. camera.it
UK Parliament, House of Lords, Written question HL6144, answer by Baroness Goldie, 20 March 2023. parliament.uk
World Nuclear News, «Zaporizhzhia reconnected to external power after 18 days», 8 September 2026. world-nuclear-news.org
World Nuclear Association, «Ukraine, Russia, War and Nuclear Energy», updated 23 September 2026. world-nuclear.org
IAEA, «Nuclear safety, security and safeguards in Ukraine», topic page. iaea.org
UN News, Grossi at the Security Council on Zaporizhzhia, 30 May 2023. news.un.org
UN News, Bushehr, 4 April 2026. news.un.org
UN News, IAEA General Conference, 14 September 2026. news.un.org
EBRD, «EBRD donors back plan to repair Chornobyl’s protective shield», 1 April 2026. ebrd.com
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977, article 56. ohchr.org
IAEA, «Update: Eight questions and answers on the amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material». iaea.org
AGI, «Il Senato approva il ddl sul nucleare. Cosa cambia e come funziona», 24 September 2026. agi.it
PMI.it, «Legge sul nucleare, via libera definitivo alla delega: cosa prevede», September 2026. pmi.it
Previous articles on ScienceOnline
«The world’s chips on the fault. Do not build below this point», Guido Donati, 23 September 2026. scienzaonline.com
«La cenere dal cielo: un’estate sospesa nel silenzio radioattivo – Parte 1», Guido Donati. scienzaonline.com
«Oltre Hiroshima: la lunga eredità dei test nucleari nel mondo», Claudia Gianvenuti, 17 October 2025. scienzaonline.com
«Fukushima, è ancora contaminato l’85% dell’Area Speciale di Decontaminazione», Greenpeace, 4 March 2021. scienzaonline.com
«Particulate plutonium released from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns», Helsingin yliopisto (University of Helsinki), 15 July 2020. scienzaonline.com
«Ortles: il ghiacciaio si muove dopo 7.000 anni», Comunicato stampa CNR, 30 January 2017. scienzaonline.com
«Film: Fukushima Never Again», Guido Donati, 15 November 2013. scienzaonline.com
«Terremoto Giappone: La Scossa ha spostato l’asse terrestre di circa 10 cm», Nicola Cosanni, 11 March 2011. scienzaonline.com
«CHERNOBYL, WWF: ‘viaggio nell’infanzia contaminata’», WWF, 28 April 2011. scienzaonline.com
*Board Member, SRSN (Roman Society of Natural Science)
Past Editor-in-Chief Italian Journal of Dermosurgery
