Greifswald Disaster

> *My son burns in the flaming ring,*
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> *Because atomic nails are planted in his hands,*
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> *Because his lips burn with hellish torment ..*
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- Ivan Drach, "The Madonna of Chernobyl"

The Greifswald nuclear power plant was a Soviet designed nuclear power station located in the small town of Lubin, on Greifswald Bay. Commissioned in 1974, the plant provided energy to much of northern East Germany and a small part of Poland.

During the war, Greifswald continued to operate at full power due to the need to support East German wartime industry. When NATO forces entered East Germany, several East German and Soviet military units were stationed in the area. Although West German military intelligence revealed that the garrison had low morale and desertion rates were high, the decision was made to bypass this and several other Soviet holdouts in East Germany in order to hasten a general Soviet military collapse in Poland, which would allow for leisurely mopping up of isolated Warsaw Pact units once overall strategic control of the Central European theatre had been secured.

The plant presumably kept running throughout the conflict, even though much of the area it was supplying power to came under NATO occupation.

In April 1986, the plant exploded. Exactly what happened is unknown, but there are three main theories. The first is that the East German and Soviet technicians operating the plant made a critical error, probably exacerbated by stress caused by food shortages and wartime conditions. This is considered dubious because plant safety systems would tend to lead to a shutdown, not an explosion. The second is that a NATO airstrike breached the containment core around the reactor. This explanation raises questions, since destroying the plant would have accomplished very little for NATO's battle plan, and NATO planners were well aware of the risks of an accidental core breach during an air strike. The third, and most shocking possibility is that the plant was deliberately exploded, presumably at the behest of the Soviet troops guarding it, in order to cause disruption to NATO forces operating in East Germany and West Poland.

Whatever the cause of the explosion, the effect was immediate. The burning reactor was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off every few hours. Radioactive fallout was blown south over most of the former East Germany, although changing winds sometimes blew the fallout towards Denmark, the Polish coast or the southern tip of Sweden. Panic spread throughout East Germany, with many civilians fleeing desperately to the West. By the end of April, most of the former East Germany was empty.

In addition to the human catastrophe, NATO forces in Poland were cut off from the few precarious supply lanes they had managed to maintain prior to the previous year's nuclear exchange, making them even more reliant on "living off the land". The only comfort they could obtain was the fact that Soviet forces in East Germany and Czechoslovakia could not occupy the vacated territory due to the ongoing radiation risk. Some NBC specialists with NATO forces in Poland believe that eventually the Greifswald reactor will burn itself out, or the structure will collapse, but even when this happens, radioactive fallout will continue to render Eastern Germany uninhabitable for years to come.