2.1. Epidemiological and economic inputs

The study model was based on the best available epidemiological data on prior nuclear disasters including the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl (with at least 10 million exposed, 350,000 people evacuated and $700 billion total costs) and Japan’s Fukushima (with at least 32 million exposed, 154,000 evacuated, and $202.5 billion total costs) ⁽²⁷, ²⁸, ²⁹, ³⁰⁾. The above costs principally reflect individual costs for clean-up and decontamination, but also entail evacuation, relocation, emergency response, and medical treatment ⁽³¹⁾. The IAEA estimates for the average fuel burn up for the Zaporizhzhia plant nuclear fuel is 44-49GWd/tHM.32 Mean weather and wind conditions for March to May were assumed. Current available nuclear specialist estimates for radioactivity spread from Zaporizhzhia under such conditions were assumed, including the mean spread estimate spanning Ukraine, southeastern Russia, Belarus, Turkey, and Europe (north to Sweden, northwest to the United Kingdom, west to France) ⁽³³⁾. Blast and radiation-related mortality was set as the primary epidemiological outcome, encompassing immediate blast trauma, Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS), and radiation-induced and accelerated cardiovascular disease and cancer. Economic inputs relate to the mean costs of the below treatments and control. It was assumed that only symptomatic exposed patients (cases) would utilize hospital and outpatient services and that asymptomatic exposed or possibly exposed populations (non-cases) would use post-exposure services at a rate of 86%. Mortality costs were calculated using the human capital formula as the lost current monetary value of future productivity from premature mortality.

There were additionally necessary and standard model assumptions. It was assumed there would be no substantive emergency preparedness at the health system level for nuclear terror (for hospital and outpatient treatment) or transportation level given the unprecedented threat of a continent-wide nuclear fallout, the absence of any substantive plans with accompanying resources anywhere in the world at this scale, and the practical impossibility to rapidly evacuate at scale the European continent and surrounding region. Population totals were obtained from the World Bank for the above affected regions accounted for the refugee migration up to March 9, 2022 ⁽³⁴⁾. The model assumed there were no effective post-exposure prophylaxis given the absence of any commonly accepted and effective post-radiation prophylaxis for blast trauma or moderate to severe ARS. Based on US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, treatment was considered to have no mortality benefit for blast trauma victims, minimal ARS cases with bone marrow syndrome (up to 10 Gray [Gy] units), nearly absent for ARS cases with gastrointestinal syndrome (over 10 Gy), and absent for ARS cases with cardiovascular or central nervous system syndrome (over 50 Gy) ⁽³⁵⁾.

For the prevention scenario, the costs were calculated based on the UN peacekeeper force or North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reclaiming of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plants, defensive support to protect the plants for the duration of the war, and limited humanitarian no-fly zone (or at least humanitarian air bridge or corridors or S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system) based on prior similar operations ⁽³⁶⁾. These actions were deemed the minimal tactically necessary actions to prevent nuclear meltdown given the following: a) the global consensus about the failure of alternative means including sanctions from deterring Russian threats against the above facilities and the Ukrainian inability thus far to retake these facilities; b) the threat of continued Russian air attacks without a UN or NATO-enforced no-fly zone or S-300 defense system; c) the UN and NATO hesitation thus far of enforcing a military no-fly zone for fear of precipitating a direct Russian, NATO hot conflict (as the humanitarian zone would not directly engage Russian fighters except defensively, and the provision of the S-300 defensive missiles could be used solely by Ukrainian forces including could be solely used to protect humanitarian corridors without operation by NATO actors, while a military no-fly zone would potentially directly engage Russian fighters by NATO actors offensively); d) the growing international pressure promoting the necessity of at least such a focused no-fly zone or air bridge or S-300 system to deter rather than encourage Russian confrontation (including the open letter signed by the US’s former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe and 26 other former top diplomats, military commanders, and White House advisors); e) the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has already deemed US and EU sanctions against Russia amounting to «economic war»; f) the US CIA Director already confirmed the US intelligence community’s conviction that Putin will use any means necessary to «win» his war against Ukraine; g) and the prior success of the 1948-1949 Western-led Berlin Airlift breaking the Soviet blockage against food and water for western Berlin civilians (while avoiding direct military and nuclear conflict between the Americans and Soviets) ⁽³⁷, ³⁸, ³⁹, ⁴⁰⁾. For the treatment and control scenarios, costs were adjusted by the expected permanent uninhabitable zone around the blast site requiring complete population relocation. Maximum and minimum values were determined based on varying degree of interventions’ effectiveness, blast and radioactivity spread radius, and 3% and 5% discount rate for present value of expected future earnings from the CDC ⁽⁴¹, ⁴²⁾.

2.2. Cost effectiveness analysis

We performed this cost analysis utilizing the methodology adopted by the CDC ⁽⁴³⁾, commonly accepted figures as inputs, and both low and high extreme assumptions to generate the mean expected success of Intervention A (prevention) and Intervention B (treatment) compared to Control (no prevention or effective treatment) based on standard bioterrorism modelling and management (noted in the above Introduction). Prevention entailed the above collective actions taken to avoid the above nuclear terror event (produced through, [a] a false flag operation sabotaging a Ukrainian nuclear power plant producing a Chernobyl-like nuclear meltdown; [b] the deliberate continued military occupation of the plant increasing the likelihood of accidental disruption of operations and thus malfunction and meltdown [i.e. through disruption of plant power from power grid or generator failure or damage, or damage inflicted on the cooling tanks sufficient to drain them]; or [c] deliberate indiscriminate military assault near the plant resulting in accidental disruption of operations and thus malfunction and meltdown). Sanctions were not considered as part of prevention given: a) the global consensus of sanctions’ historical failure to significantly alter state actions particularly military actions (including the Soviet Union and Putin’s 2014 seizing of Ukraine’s Crimea region); b) the growing concern sanctions will fail to force Putin to cease Russia’s current war with Ukraine; c) no discernible deterrent effect of Russia’s escalating military actions (evidenced by Russia’s assault on the Zaporizhzhia plant, its continued occupation of Ukrainian power plants including Zaporizhzhia, and its growing alleged war crimes and terror acts against civilians) ⁽⁴⁴⁾. Treatment was deemed an effective consequence management program per standard bioterrorism management including: hospitalization and post-hospitalization outpatient visits for case patients, postexposure monitoring for non-case populations, emergency evacuation for case and non case populations, and environmental decontamination. Economic results are expressed in US dollars.

2.3. Machine learning analysis

The above analysis was augmented by machine learning (ML) to confirm adequately robust estimates by amplifying the assumptions 1000-fold for each algorithm, re-running the model using the below algorithms, and collapsing the results into stable mean results to confirm the above traditional statistical analysis ⁽⁴³⁾, supervised learning algorithms were utilized with 10-fold cross validations selected based upon the data type. Performance among algorithms were assessed based on higher accuracy, lower Root Relative Squared Error (RRSE) with model acceptability set at 100% (for comparison among ML algorithms), and lower Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE, for comparison to traditional statistical results). The following algorithms by type were tested: Bayesian (Bayes Net, Naive Bayes, Naive Bayes Multinomial Text, and Naïve Bayes Updateable); Functions (Logistic, Multilayer perceptron, SGD, SGD Text, Simple Logistic, SMO, and Voted Perceptron); Lazy (IBK, KStar, and LWL); Meta (AdaBoostM1, Attribute Selected Classifier, Bagging, Classification via Regression, CV Parameter Selection, Iterative Classifier Optimizer, Logit Boost, Multiclass Classifier, Multiclass Classifier Updateable, Multi-Scheme, Random Committee, Randomizable Filtered Classifier, Random Sub-Space, Stacking, Vote, and Weighted Instances Handler Wrapper); Miscellaneous (Input Mapped Classifier); Rules (Decision Table, JRip, OneR, Part, and ZeroR), and Trees (Decision Stump, Hoeffding Tree, J48, LMT, Random Forest, Random Tree, and REP Tree).

2.4. Health equity analysis

Equitable health outcomes were assessed based on publicly available official estimates pertaining to socioeconomic and racial groups as defined in the current nuclear, bioterrorism, medical, and public health literature to determine possible divergences in outcome not adequately explained by biology and pathophysiology but potentially by modifiable sociocultural traits. The model assumed the disproportionate health and economic impact of the nuclear meltdown would be born by lower income particularly racial minority communities who are particularly dependent upon such vulnerable economic sectors as tourism, agriculture, and fishing industries which would be particularly hard hit ⁽⁴⁵, ⁴⁶⁾. The model assumed the closest multinational disaster with the most reliable data that may approximate such a multinational nuclear meltdown may be the COVID-19 pandemic, in terms of the scope, severity, and duration of sustained disruption in health, economic, and societal operations. Health inequity costs for the above meltdown were thus calculated by the World Bank estimates of COVID-19 related poverty increases and the cost of poverty to the larger economy, relative to Europe ⁽⁴⁷⁾.

2.5. Computational ethical analysis

Ethical analysis with AICE was then conducted. Its first two phases respectively included the cost effectiveness and health equity analyses above to inform the third phase of concrete ethical analysis to produce proposed conclusions on concrete responses to the situation in question. AICE was thus conducted by integrating the above quantitative analysis with the global bioethical framework of the Personalist Social Contract (PSC) ⁽⁴⁸, ⁴⁹, ⁵⁰, ⁵¹⁾. The PSC is a novel integration of modern ethics (principally utilitarianism-informed Rawlsian social contract of political liberalism, bounded by Kantian deontology and informed by feminist, Marxist, deconstructionist, and ecological ethics) and classical ethics (principally Thomistic-Aristotelian virtue ethics, articulated by William Carlo’s esse-/essence revision of Norris Clarke’s Strong Thomistic Personalism, a derivative formulation of Thomism which itself a development of Aristotelianism) ⁽⁵², ⁵³, ⁵⁴, ⁵⁵, ⁵⁶, ⁵⁷, ⁵⁸⁾.

The core structural features of its framework are as follows. Metaphysically, it incorporates a Carlo-refined Clark-style Strong Thomistic Personalism that recognizes the person in her/his objective and subjective dimensions as being she/he who is most complete, happy, and flourishing in a gift of self specifically to other persons in love, and to other beings more generally in responsible care for the larger non-person ecosystem. As such, it entails an extended defense of a metaphysics of multiculturalism that explicitly cites the world’s diverse belief systems (including in their canonical texts as applicable) and elaborates the substantive converging (not simply Rawlsian-like overlapping) consensus as metaphysical (not simply political) of the identify of the person individually, and thus the criteria for justice and its subsequent peace communally. This consensus is a three-dimensional conception of human dignity that is intellectually derivative from the metaphysical identity of the human person grounded in the good. In origin, order, and orientation, the person can be understood (commonly across belief systems and through sufficiently respectful and careful exploration of those belief systems) to have intrinsic and non-finite (or arbitrarily limited) value. She/he comes into existence according to the particular essence of the human person (but not by the power of the individual person) and as such increasingly realizes her/his full dignity through increasingly knowing and willing the ultimate good and its accordingly ordered instrumental goods as its appropriate means (which includes the common good of the human community which constitutes concurrently the unique individual good of each person realized in a gift of self to the community, while the community serves the instrumental goods or needs of the person, including the highest which is to fully know and be united with the ultimate good). This existential origin and related moral order are ultimately orientated to the teleological ultimate good or end which is Goodness Itself (as Aristotle described, but refined according to the Thomistic Clark account of Esse or the Sheer Act of Existence or Being Itself [which is Love Itself], further refined by the Thomistic Carlo’s clarification of thick-esse/thin-essence and metaphysical receptivity as transcendental perfection or completion). Rationally derivative from this metaphysical foundation is the PSC’s theoretical principles (definition of and thus respect for individual dignity and communal culture [the latter being the collective and relational search for the ultimate good as the most fundamental, human, and personal of all endeavors and acts]), its practical principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, and its primary ethical principle of the Wojtylan Personalist Norm (as a modification of Kant’s second categorical imperative elevating the Enlightenment’s and constructivist minimalist ethical principle to the personal dimension by arguing for love as the essence of a full conception of ethics based on justice or what is due to persons from other persons, since the «person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love»). These principles are relationally ordered in the pluralistic framework emerging from the above Thomistic Personalist metaphysical foundation by incorporating the unique perspectives in their own words of the world’s diverse belief systems (including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and secularism [with particular attention paid to the nuances and subtleties among and between these religious frameworks including atheism and agnosticism]) ⁽⁵⁹, ⁶⁰, ⁶¹, ⁶², ⁶³, ⁶⁴, ⁶⁵, ⁶⁶⁾.

The PSC was chosen as the primary ethical framework for its: a) practical, b) political, and c) philosophical advantages over competing frameworks: a) practically, it is historically articulated in the world’s most dominant and cited ethical system (of human dignity based rights and duties) as expressed paradigmatically by the UN’s 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and resultant international law and related international ethical conventions; b) politically, it is the only ethical framework that substantively accounts for and facilitates the convergence of the world’s nations (including through the UN explicitly grounded in the UDHR) and belief systems (including the above); and c) philosophically, it uniquely corrects the foundational metaphysical errors and resultant logical self-contradictions of modern ethics through the classic Aristotelian-derived Thomism and its Thomistic Personalist formulation, but made intelligible in modern terms, while producing the conclusions that modern ethics otherwise largely attempts but fails logically to reach and defend (including the protection of pluralism and multiculturalism which modern ethics largely ultimately truncates or excludes). The extended, detailed, and comprehensive definition and defense of these reported advantages are outside the scope of this focused manuscript; thus, the above references are cited for additional reading as relevant for particular readers (especially ^{Monlezun 2020} and ^{Monlezun 2022} as full-length books providing synthetic summary and elaboration of the above and related works as part of a larger definition and defense of PSC). Additionally, further definition and defense for the PSC was considered superfluous for this manuscript and irrelevant for the vast majority of readers given the largely uncontroversial and generally accepted conclusion reached at the end of the results that an optimal multi-national response across diverse belief systems is required for this crisis on both economic and ethical grounds (but even the economic grounds are considered by this paper to be sufficient reasoning to support collective action). And so the particular ethical framework diverse readers invoke explicitly or implicitly to reach this conclusion is irrelevant to the paper. Its primary ethical framework is at least compatible with readers’ diverse ethical frameworks (a generally accepted claim) and at most is more compellingly argued using the paper’s PSC framework (a less generally accepted claim that still does not need to be proven in the brief confines of this paper for the end of the conclusion to still hold, regardless of the particular means that diverse readers may take to arrive at it).

3.1. Cost effectiveness analysis

Epidemiologically, there would be 0 exposed in the prevention scenario and 943 million exposed from radioactivity spread in the treatment and control scenarios. For mortality, there would 39 deaths in the prevention scenario, 1,886 deaths in the treatment scenario, and 4,715 deaths in the control scenario. Economically, the prevention costs would be $37.2 million, treatment costs would be $306.2 trillion, and the control costs would be $66.0 trillion.

Cost analysis indicated that there is a cost-effectiveness ratio for prevention versus treatment of $165.8 billion saved per averted death and net savings of $306.2 trillion. The cost-effectiveness ratio for prevention versus control of $14.1 billion saved per averted death and net savings of $60.0 trillion. Machine learning analysis confirmed comparable above results by RMSE (Root Mean Squared Error).

3.2. Health equity analysis

Lower income communities particularly poorer racial minorities would bear the disproportionate health and economic burden of nuclear meltdown in both the treatment and control scenarios from diverse factors, particularly decreased capacity for individuals (for evacuation, healthcare system access for treatment of post-exposure complications and resumption of pre-existing comorbidity and non-radiation acute management, and security [food, housing, education, jobs, and non-discrimination], violence exposure [including gender-based]) and states (for building health system surge capacities for post-exposure treatment, resuming non-radiation operations, making up for lost economic output, opportunity costs for talent migration to richer and less impacted states, and related public health capacities [including welfare, education, infrastructure, and defense]). Such inequities would total $493.7 trillion over 25 years.

3.3. Personalist Social Contract computational ethical analysis

The above health and economic inputs then informed the final phase of the computational ethical analysis. The primary material objects of this ethical analysis were false flag weaponization of a Ukrainian active nuclear power plan or deliberate assault and occupation of one with subsequent accidental compromise of its operations (with either situation resulting in plant blast, nuclear meltdown, and transcontinental radioactivity spread). The secondary material objects were prevention (military re-conquest of such facility and narrowly focused humanitarian no-fly zones or humanitarian air bridge to prevent recurrent loss of the facility or capture of any related), treatment (evacuation, emergency response, hospital care, and outpatient follow-up), and control (none of the above). The primary formal object or analytic framework is the PSC.

In brief, the PSC argues that the world’s diverse belief systems (including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and secularism) converge substantively, metaphysically, and ethically in the shared conviction of the intrinsic and inviolable dignity of every human person. This dignity is derivative from her/his biological identity as a human being (regardless of any artificially or arbitrarily identified traits such as sex, nationality, or belief system). As such, the person is a dependent rational animal from conception to death, linked in societal inter-dependencies requiring and fostering virtuous and thus just treatment to all members of the human community to survive and thrive. The community in turn is required for the full flourishing of the human person who finds her/his fulfillment (union with good itself) in the duty of justice contributing to the common good of the community, which in turn safeguards the individual good of the person (completed metaphysically in the highest form of justice which is love, the commitment of the will to the objective good of the other person as other, as love is ultimately what is due to a person insofar as she/he is a person). The PSC defines and defends such convergence, which is individually echoed and anchored in the above diverse belief systems’ principles (with Buddhism’s sila, Christianity’s doctrine of Jesus’ incarnation and redemptive passion and resurrection, Confucianism’s jen and yi, Hinduism’s dharma, Islam and Judaism’s [along with Christianity’s] doctrine of humanity made in the image and likeness of God and destined for unity with God through a just life of love, and secularism’s Rawlsian-like political and pluralistic ‘justice’ as fairness).

Applied to this concrete ethical situation, the formal PSC argument is as follows:

Premise 1. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is an unprovoked attack against another sovereign nation in such a manner that indiscriminately deprives soldiers and civilians of life, liberty, and property.

Premise 2. Life, liberty, and property are individual and state rights derivative from the human person’s dignity.

Premise 3. Respect for dignity at the individual level requires respecting the person’s rights to goods necessary for the person to virtuously develop through just and stable commitment to the common good in unique love of others and thus the community.

Premise 4. Respect for dignity at the communal level requires respecting another culture as the communal manifestation of its constitutive individuals seeking through justice the common good as the objective good of the community entailing the objective good of individual flourishing (subjectively experienced as the ultimate individual good of self-actualization through justice completed in love uniting the person to the community united in goodness itself).

Premise 5. The Russian invasion fails to respect the rights of multinational individuals in Ukraine (including Ukrainians, Europeans, Middle Easterners, Africans, Asians, and Americans) and the state of Ukraine.

Premise 6. The above political and strategic factors noted in the Methods and above Results sections detail the growing consensus about the increasing risk of Putin accelerating his attempted Ukrainian conquest through false flag bioterrorism of nuclear terror or continued indiscriminate civilian and civilian infrastructure assaults and occupation (including of nuclear plants which plausibly increase the known risk of nuclear meltdown).

Premise 7. The above prevention actions currently appear to be the only viable remaining actions necessary and sufficient to eliminate the above risk.

Premise 8. The factors listed in Premise 6 additionally are reasonably expected to strategically accelerate the sufficiently Westernsupplied Ukrainian defenses to repel Russian invasion forces and thus accelerate the war’s cease-fire negotiation and conclusion.

Premise 9. The unprecedented health, economic, societal, and ecological costs for treatment and non-prevention exceed multiple times over what even the global population and economy could afford (including Russia), amid mounting global costs already in energy and finance and food limitations disproportionately impacting lower income nations.

Conclusion. Therefore, UN or NATO defensive reclaiming of the Ukrainian power plants and a limited humanitarian no-fly zones, humanitarian air bridge or protected humanitarian corridors, or S-300 system are required to eliminate the unjust nuclear terror risk, including by accelerating the prompt end of the war (without which the nuclear terror risk remains excessively elevated).