In the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, drones and ballistic and cruise missiles have begun to be used against strategic atomic facilities.
Armed conflicts put nuclearized countries and those aspiring to become so in a situation of serious vulnerability.
Santiago Vilanova - Journalist
One of the main reasons of the Anti-Nuclear Committee of Catalonia (CANC), founded 50 years ago, for opposing nuclearization was the indissoluble warlike origin of fission. We also referred to the aspects of military control exercised authoritarianly by the Nuclear Energy Board (JEN), composed of high-ranking military officers.
Terrorism was also another worrying issue. In the archives of the time, I find information about the catastrophic effects that a terrorist group attack through the manufacture of a dirty nuclear bomb could have, as well as the danger of actions against radioactive transport, one of the most worrying risks (see "Nuclear Terrorism on the Watch", El Punt-Avui, 5/4/2016). During the years that the Vandellòs graphite-gas reactor operated (1972-1990), from which the dictator hoped to obtain plutonium, and until the fire in 1989, which forced the closure of the plant, every three or four months a special train transported the approximately 30 tons of spent fuel (the reactor generated 1,914 tons during its lifetime) to the reprocessing centers in Marcoule (Occitania) and La Hague (Normandy), where they remain stored. The convoy was guarded to the border by a member of the Radiation Protection Service of the plant and five Civil Guard officers! Alternativa Verda publicly denounced that radioactive transport crossing Catalonia, passing close to houses and through the centers of Barcelona and Girona.
In another dimension, we warned about the risk that reactors could become "preferred targets" in a war. What seemed, however, an implausible threat has become a reality. In the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, drones and ballistic and cruise missiles have begun to be used against strategic atomic facilities, endangering global nuclear security.
Researchers at the International Institute of Vienna for Middle East Studies have warned of the humanitarian and ecological disasters that attacks on nuclear power plants could cause with the support of new war technologies. We have seen how Iran bombed with ballistic missiles the Negev Nuclear Research Center, known as the Israeli Dimona plant; how the United States did so with cruise missiles against the Iranian uranium enrichment centers in Fordow and Natanz and the Isfahan nuclear research and technology center; how the Barakah plant in Abu Dhabi was attacked with drones; how Zaporizhzhia, the largest European plant with six reactors, was threatened with drones, as was the Russian Kursk plant. Civil nuclear energy and its fuel cycle have ceased to be militarily "untouchable". This new military strategy has not had any decisive intervention from either the United Nations or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
According to nucleocrats, the wars in Ukraine and Iran have contributed to transforming nuclear energy into an "indisputable necessity" and the energy crisis they have provoked has become a powerful narcotic capable of making public opinion forget the accidents of Chernobyl and Fukushima. For its part, the atomic lobby, organized by builders from Russia (Rosatom), France (EDF-Framatome), the United States (Westinghouse, Bechtel, Terra Power...) and China (China National Nuclear Corporation), has continued to announce the construction of 70 new reactors, out of the 413 currently operational, in fifteen countries, including Egypt, Turkey, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Algeria, Taiwan, Morocco, Mali, Nigeria and South Africa. Paradoxically, the nuclear percentage of electricity production has not stopped falling: from 17.1% in 2001 to 8.85% in 2025, while renewables already cover 33.8% of global demand (Ember think tank report).
The offensive against nuclear installations has become more frequent since February 24, 2022, when Russia began a military invasion of the entire Ukrainian territory, and when on February 28, 2026, Iran received several bombings from Israel and the United States. Since then, armed conflicts place nuclearized countries and those that aspire to be so in a situation of serious vulnerability. In the Spanish case, the progressive closure of all reactors (2027-2035) would contribute to building a peace economy. But the electricity employers' association attacks it.
