It’s a strategic location with tons of radioactive material. Ukraine closed all of the exclusion zone a few days before the invasion.
At this point I think it’s about securing the site so material cannot be used in dirty bombs. If this war were go to nuclear the world has no choice but to get involved.
Or so that it can be, as part of a false flag attack. Alternatively, Russian troops could sabotage it, just to create a (bigger) ecological disaster to punish Ukraine for resisting invasion.
Dirty bombs don’t seem like a thing you would even want to mess with. The types of materials you would need are heavy and very dangerous to handle and transport in the concentrations needed to add them to a bomb. The resulting package would be tremendous heavy and probably have to be transported by truck. The whole operation could kill anyone involved in building and transporting it.
On top of that, it wouldn’t be very effective. Most of the radioactive material would be heavy and fall out of the air quickly. Anyone covered in the dust however could shower and probably be totally fine. One the dust is dispersed it’s unlikely to be radioactive enough to form an exclusion zone.
On top of all of that, the whole world now thinks you’re a godless monster, and you might wind up in The Hague. It’s a loser of an idea.
NPR reminded me this Saturday about suspicious bombings of Russian citizens in Russia in 1999 (300 killed) which propelled Putin into power. There's some evidence that it was a false flag operation.
At this point I think it’s about securing the site so material cannot be used in dirty bombs. If this war were go to nuclear the world has no choice but to get involved.