By David Davidian
The following fictional Red Cell scenario is intended to stimulate alternative thinking and challenge conventional wisdom, tying together events in operational fiction with national realities.
The goal was to ensure there was no chance of an accidental activation of Armenia’s Samson Option. After all, there is no way of reversing the effects of detonating Armenia’s Metsamor Nuclear Power Station (NPP) operating at full power. The Samson Option refers to the strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated.
An Armenian Samson Option would be the absolute last-ditch effort to deter capturing and eliminating what remains of the Armenian homeland and its people. Suppose an enemy of Armenia plans on attacking Armenia, destroying or cleansing its population and what remains of its culture. In that case, it will be met with so much radioactive contamination and fallout that the enemy will surely think hard about destroying what remains of Armenia and capturing its land. What remains of Armenia and surrounding lands will be uninhabitable for centuries. Armenia’s enemies are just outside of Armenian borders, and the radioactive contamination carried by prevailing atmospheric conditions will wreak havoc on them to such an extent as to make the Chernobyl nuclear disaster look insignificant. Chernobyl was due to blatant human error. Armenia’s Samson Option will be planned for maximum effect.
Armenians either live on what remains of their once vast homeland, or nobody does. Two-thirds of Armenians in Asia Minor were exterminated in the 1915 Turkish genocide of the Armenians, with their lands carved up between Turkey and the Soviet Union. This genocide extended into lands outside of Turkish borders into Persia, Tsarist Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Armenian history is tragic, but the Armenians have decided to write their own epilogue. Is this option ethical? It is just as ethical as the Cold War nuclear standoff with the United States and the Soviet Union armed with almost 60,000 nuclear warheads, enough to destroy all life on earth hundreds of times over. That was tolerated. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Serbia, and Ukraine have all been justified, with many hundreds of thousands of innocent people murdered. All these actions were planned, justified and tolerated. The Armenian Samson Option is no different than any of these post-WWII examples of acceptable human behavior. The Armenians were finally serious and made friends with horror.
After a diasporan conglomerate purchased Armenia’s Metsamor NPP from Rosatom and the international intrigue died down after the theft of its spent nuclear fuel, ‘The Division’ was still looking for the twenty-four spent fuel assemblies that were unaccounted for in the aftermath of this heist. The Division was the moniker for Armenia’s National Security Services (NSS) branch that dealt with integrating advanced technologies in the country and investigating high-technology crimes. A new level of state security clearance was added to the existing Confidential, Top Secret, Of Special Importance levels. This new level was called the Black Level (BL). Anybody with a BL clearance doesn’t have much of a life, has a high IQ, and is highly multi-disciplined. A BL cleared individual undergoes periodic reinvestigation and, counter to its ancient Soviet-era counterpart, is mandated to independently undertake the most critical operational decisions. It is no surprise that those at this security level are neither married nor have a family. Armenia’s NSS was transformed from a top-down organization to something horizontal with constant checks and balances.
Armenia’s geopolitical situation is one where it cannot afford to make any strategic mistakes. BL’s overarching function was the continued updating and implementation of Armenia’s Grand National Strategy. BL operatives enabled the implementation of Armenia’s Samson Option. BL was crucial in planting targeted individuals in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and its agents accompanied sanctioned IAEA inspections of the Metsamor NPP. Within BL’s charter was an active program to create and gather “kompromat” on foreign leaders of importance to Armenia’s national security.
Five issues had to be overcome to successfully design Armenia’s Samson Option, each with its challenges:
1) Secrecy.
2) Placing nano-thermite and a new experimental high explosive bis(1,2,4-oxadiazole)bis(methylene) dinitrate, or BOM for short, in strategic locations in Metsamor NPP’s infrastructure. This was the best performance per unit volume explosive available.
3) Ensuring there is no chance of a self-detonation (such as with nuclear weapons), being disabled or detonated by an enemy EMP class of weapon.
4) Addressing the diplomatic fallout upon the “denial of such capability.”
5) Purging, co-opting, or compromising spies.
The detonation was accomplished with three independent circuits, each with digital controllers that, even before power was applied (a combination of line and battery backup) to the networked detonators, each ran a diagnostic on the detonator side. A result code was sent to The Division headquarters and several undisclosed locations, each with different transport mechanisms. The diagnostics ran on an average of once every hour. In reality, they ran randomly to avoid prediction. This redundancy was to ensure that it would work in case of a planned or auto-enabled detonation, with the chance of an accidental detonation being effectively zero. Months of testing were performed in a mock reactor building, including developing techniques for insulating detonators circuits from high temperatures in many vital locations.
Of course, autonomous systems would take over the detonation of Metsomor given an incapacitated state apparatus. This capability used a combination of social media, radio and electronic monitoring, AI algorithms, and the combination of several layers of redundancies, each based on mutually exclusive information. Several redundant systems connected The Division’s headquarters with the Metsamor NPP, including a human to press the final button inside Metsamor if all else failed. The NSS BL had nearly unfettered access to Metsamor and performed periodic and unannounced security inspections due to the heist of spent fuel. It was the perfect cover to place explosives, detonation components, and their networking.
Explosive devices would be planted and disguised, while others physically placed at the last minute. Some devices would be robotically placed, especially those near Metsamor’s VVER-440-230’s reactor vessel. Metsamor’s spent fuel heist allowed Armenia’s NSS special access to the refueling cranes, pullies, and rails. Suicide drones (UAVs) would also be used to ensure maximum destruction of Metsamor NPP’s cooling infrastructure and reactor building as a backup mechanism if something prevented either manual or auto-destruction of Metsamor. Specific details of the interaction of these and other redundancies were not available at the time of this writing.
The map below details the extent of nuclear contamination that would result from an accident at the Metsamor NPP. Ironically, it comes from a Turkish study. The effects of the destruction of Metsamor would be many times more devastating due to its planned optimization.
BL and NSS agents with specific scientific backgrounds slowly secured positions within the Metsamor NPP, as many of those who worked at the NPP were purposely offered well-paid jobs outside of the NPP.
During periodic NSS inspections of the Metsamor NPP, the best locations to place explosives were determined. It was not as difficult as one might expect. Primary systems were targeted, but what is known as a “secondary cooling contour” needed to be taken out. However, as difficult as it may be for some policymakers, some of these systems must not be entirely disabled. Their partial operation would contribute to more geographically dispersed radioactive contamination. In other words, planners had to optimize the destruction of the Metsamor NPP for maximum effect. In addition, a special operation was planned for what remained in the Metsamor’s spent fuel pool. BL planned to raise the reactor’s control rods to their maximum height without sounding alarms and overcoming mechanical safety features. This procedure would immediately increase the temperature of the reactor core, raising the pressure of the already superheated steam and begin the process of mechanically deforming the fuel assemblies. When the control rods are fully inserted, the reactor shuts down but is still hot. If the rods are fully extracted the reactor becomes supercritical (how supercritical depends mainly on the average age of the fuel) accompanied by an immediate spike in heat generation. Any mechanical deformation of the fuel assemblies would interfere with using gravity to drop the control rods into the fuel, typically putting the reactor in a sub-critical condition. Computer simulations are still ongoing, but this supercritical operation would have to be accomplished at the maximum speed the rods could be withdrawn, which was never designed to be fast. Even if this supercritical plan were impossible, the explosives would fulfill Samson’s goal. In any case, adding complexity to an already challenging operation is never desirable. Slowly and methodically devices were planted at specific locations through the Metsamor’s VVER-440-230 reactor infrastructure during the various security inspections performed by a specialist from NSS’s BL team. A classic positioning of explosive devices was done during the upgrading of the scores of temperature and pressure sensors scattered around reactor vessels, pumps, stream generators, etc. See accompanied layout of a VVER-440 Model 230 plant.
Not only did state-of-the-art enhanced sensor technology make operators in the control room happy, but because the mandated upgrade to the Metsamor NPP required external monitoring of vital system parameters, the NSS utilized miniature sensors within the same or slightly larger sensor units with the extra space filled with explosives, nano-thermite, digital controllers, detonators and networking hardware. Over eighty sensors were eventually “upgraded.” Of particular concern was the control rod positioning motors to prevent a gravity drop of the control rods, even if the plant to extract the rods could not be accomplished. A unique procedure was used near the control units and actuators for the control rods to at least keep them in their current positions, as the rest of the plant was destroyed. Finally, the BOM chemical explosives and nano-thermite were placed near the base of the reactor vessel, ensuring an atmospheric exposure to the fuel assemblies. Computer simulations would determine each sub-system’s detonation order and relative explosive intensity. Any nuclear engineer would know that destroying all six primary cooling loops and emergency cooling would be the minimum required while disabling control rod insertion to achieve Armenian’s Samson Option.
A Generic Diagram of a Russian VVER Nuclear Reactor
For millennia, it has been claimed that battles are won on the ground, but wars by diplomats. It took several years to replace Armenia’s business-centric, oligarch-serving diplomatic corps with one that enabled business and economic ties with the world while serving the interests of Armenian sovereignty. The former is not a guarantee of the latter, as was demonstrated through a generation beginning in 1991 when Armenia declared independence from the Soviet Union.
Armenia was somewhat irrelevant on the international scene. The prevailing thought was that the bullies would ignore you if you hid in the schoolyard of international relations. History has demonstrated such a myopic position is short-lived. However, in stark contrast to past follies and naïve ideas about geopolitics, Armenia’s diplomats were now well prepared for what was to be an unprecedented global situation. Israel’s Samson Option was offensive – if you engage in our destruction, you will be destroyed with nuclear weapons with multiple delivery systems. Armenia’s Samson Option was defensive. If you engage in the destruction of Armenia, not only will Armenia be inaccessible for centuries, but most of the land area in a 1500 km radius will be heavily contaminated, and delayed cancer deaths from radiation would number nearly a hundred million.
Rumors began to leak out about Armenia’s Samson Option, especially after the Metsamor NPP was declared a military facility. The international community demanded inspection as they did just after Metsamor’s spent fuel heist. It turned out to be a game of cat and mouse until Armenian diplomacy used the limited “kompromat” provided by the NSS BL. The Armenian diaspora learned much about such techniques in the aftermath of the Jeffrey Epstein affair. By offering sexual exploits on his private island to influential people and world leaders, Epstein had an enormous amount of damaging, embarrassing, and compromising (kompromat) information on powerful people and world leaders.
The developing synergy between the NSS and select disciplines available in the diaspora allowed the BL to purchase kompromat on a few regional leaders. This kompromat was used in diplomatic meetings demanded by Armenia’s existential enemies. The regional rhetoric died down rather quickly since it was not clear just how much kompromat was in the hands of the Armenian diplomatic corps. This was similar to Imperial Japan’s problem after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan had no idea how many atomic bombs were in the US arsenal. The US only had two more! How much more kompromat did Armenia have? Nobody would take the chance to find out. Armenia learned fast to use this newly acquired sovereignty projection to influence policies in neighboring countries as it set null and void all previous alliances, both military and economic.
Armenian authorities knew there would be immediate plans drawn up to “secure” Metsamor along the lines that would be used (by the US, Israel and India) to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal if that country went rogue or its weapons fell in the hands of sub-state actors. Secret negotiations took place between Armenia and individual members of the UN Security Council and regional powers. Each agreement was as unique as Armenia’s Samson Option. Internationally, however, states with nuclear power plants signed a new agreement where each would declare their nuclear power plants weapons of mass destruction. Every state with nuclear power plants signed that agreement – except Armenia.
Yerevan, Armenia
Author: David Davidian (Lecturer at the American University of Armenia. He has spent over a decade in technical intelligence analysis at major high technology firms. He resides in Yerevan, Armenia