As a general rule nuclear power plants are housed in containment buildings that are engineered to withstand something like an airliner accidentally colliding with them. Artillery shells are unlikely to get to the reactor itself.
Outbuildings and such though - they would be vulnerable.
I’m coming into this thread some time after it started so the situation seems to be under control, no radiation released, but there are reports the plant personnel are now working with Russian soldiers “guarding” them.
Sure, but who builds nuclear plants that aren’t designed to withstand attack?
If you don’t dismiss Fukushima as a statistical fluke, then you realize that even in a major earthquake and the largest tsunami in recorded history, the plant suffered what was by any objective measure only a very minor failure, and very nearly didn’t fail at all, while every other piece of infrastructure that faced the same earthquake and tsunami failed much more drastically. Fukushima is proof that nuclear power is safe, not that it’s dangerous.
The Russians? Or was Chernobyl only designed to withstand and external attacks and blowing up from the inside was unforeseen bad luck? Then again, Chernobyl didn’t have a containment building, either.
The critical failure at Fukushima was not providing a back up power source for cooling resistant to flooding from a tsunami (not that anyone anticipate that big a tsunami - there was a protective sea wall but it wasn’t high enough). The plants did, in fact, shut down automatically in response to an earthquake as intended.
The problems in the Japanese nuclear power industry long predate the unanticipated tsunami that was fortunate to only affect a plant that released radiation out to ocean (notwithstanding the initial attempt at downplaying the severity and poor management of the problem), and despite the effort put into ensuring the safety of conventional boiling water and pressurized water nuclear fission plants, a single severe criticality accident or large release of radioactive material can cost far more than the no inal lifetime value of the plant, notwithstanding subsidized costs of waste storage and disposal and the environmental impacts of uranium mining. There is a persuasive need to improve nuclear fission power production technology to reduce waste, improve fuel element utilization vice the current once-through fuel cycle, and enhance passive safety not reliant upon training and safety discipline of human workers.
A brief review of significant accidents in the Japanese nuclear power industry and Tepco: