Posted on 01/30/2007 6:55:19 AM PST by presidio9
The danger to the US public of a September 11-like terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant is low, an official government study said.
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The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report that its extensive analyses showed that if attackers like those on September 11, 2001 flew a large aircraft into an American nuclear plant, "the likelihood of both damaging the reactor core and releasing radioactivity that could affect the public health and safety is low."
"Even in the unlikely event of a radiological release due to terrorist use of a large aircraft, there would be time to implement mitigating actions," the commission said.
The NRC made the statement as part of its argument that there was no need to tighten overall rules related to fire risk mitigation in the design and structure of the plants.
It said it had already ordered all plant operators to take whatever measures necessary to contain the effects of fire resulting from explosions in a possible attack.
Well, a government study said it so I'm off to the mall now. They have some cute shoes on sale.
I am not a nuclear physicist, but I remember a thread from a couple of years back where we did have one here explaining that even if the jet were able to puncture the several feet of concrete, the rods are still underneath something like 20 feet of water. Attacks on nuclear reactors are not viable.
I wonder how many millions of dollars were spent on this stupid study. Many on FR included myself were maintaining this position four years ago and it is well documented. The containment buildings are much more sturdily constructed than needed to withstand an aircraft direct hit.
-hogwash--
--So a jumbo jet with a full load of fuel would not breach the containment through impact and destroy the control room with the fuel-fed fire that would consume the surrounding area - that is what we can take from this study? -- The very brief article said that there would be time time to mitigate the release of radioactivity.
--Or are they saying it wouldn't matter because no terrorist will ever get their hands on a jumbo jet?--
No. They said that if they got a jet and hit the containment, there would be time to mitigate the danger.
I've been saying for years that I hope terrorists try nuclear plant attacks because it's probably the greatest waste of their resources possible - the same time and effort applied to virtually ANYTHING else would end up getting them more results.
They're just not good targets. But SO many people have been conditioned by the media to start panicking and soiling themselves at the mere mention of the word "nuclear" (and this goes for another overhyped threat, dirty bombs) that people have the strange idea that a nuclear reactor would be some sort of great target.
That, and considering the security at the nuclear power plants that I have seen rivals that in the White House, they are pretty safe. My Dad trains with their guys as a first responder. They let him see the "toys" the security detail had to play with.
Not sure about a Jumbo, but my friend who is a Nuke Engineer at TVA Sequoyah says the containment building was designed to take a direct impact from a 707. From my discussions with him on this topic, TVA is far more worried about their transmission lines being sabotaged, as opposed to the containment building being vulnerable.
I don't want to know.
Seriously.
1) I have no "need to know".
2) Even if I did, this isn't the place for it.
--I wonder how many millions of dollars were spent on this stupid study. Many on FR included myself were maintaining this position four years ago and it is well documented. The containment buildings are much more sturdily constructed than needed to withstand an aircraft direct hit. --
As one who is in the nuclear industry, I would say that you have NOT read the report and you really have no concept of what is going on here. True, the containment is very sturdily constructed (feets of concrete, rebar and steel tendons with a stainless steel inner liner and the fuel is inside that and then inside a steel vessel designed to accomodate over 2000 psig pressure being several inches thick) but there is a lot of complexity to the design and operation of the plant which you are not aware of.
Please retract your statement about it being a stupid study costing millions of dollars till you do your homework.
My next door neighbor works at TVA Sequoyah. The day after 9/11 they had troops on the roof with Stinger missiles.....I'm pretty sure they still have 'em.
...and I wondered why the Local newscasts in NYC have been harping more lately about the immediate danger posed by Indian Point. It is as though the site would turn into a nuke fireball if an errant golf ball bounced off of the structure.
They couldn't be acting to discount reports such as the one cited above because they got a call from some Friends of the Hudson River type group...could they?
You are correct. The rods in every civilian plant are in a very deep pool. The plane would almost certainly not pierce the vessel, but if it did, it would have to strike at the exact angle necessary to send significant portions of the airframe into the pool and strike the rods, and do so with enough energy that the radioactive material was ejected from the vessel. The heat of the jet fuel would create a lot of steam, but the water's ability to bleed off kinetic energy would almost certainly protect the rods anyway because the aircraft would be more of a fluid than anything else at that point. Flight 77 acted like a fluid with small chunks in it after going through the wall of the Pentagon, so there probably wouldn't be any large pieces left of a jet hitting a nuke vessel.
Now, for those of us who are nuke power boosters, consider the difference between a 767 hitting a nuke plant and a 767 hitting a liquid natural gas tanker in a major port. It would be like a small nuke going off.
...or a heavy duty weapon of the same category.
I remember a test where a jet fighter (admittedly not a airliner loaded with fuel) was crashed into a containment vessel.
On slo-mo you could see the fighter turning into a sort of powder. The containment vessel wasn't even scratched. That was about twenty years ago.
Again, I was under the impression that you can't "blow up" an LNG facility in this fashion. I thought Liquified gas wasn't flamable, and when released into the air, it expanded so quickly that it replaced all of the oxygen, extinguishing the fires that the jet crash started. Where am I wrong?
I may be mistaken on the flammability, but I doubt it because I remember the following vividly from an article I read on wargaming: In the early Seventies (I think it was in '72, right after the Munich games) the Pentagon began running some war games looking at possible tactics the PLO or other terror groups might pull in the U.S. One of their scenarios was the hijacking of an LNG tanker. The PLO positioned it in New York harbor and demanded concessions from the U.S. and Israel. Inherent in the scenario was the assumption that if they blew the tanker up it would be similar to setting off a small nuke in the harbor, and cause thousands of casualties.
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