Are Nuclear Plants Safe From Attack?
Officials Assure Nuclear Plants
Are Safe From Attack
By Amanda Onion
Oct. 22
In light of the Sept. 11 attacks and the recent string of anthrax exposures, scientists and authorities have been forced to plan for another kind of unthinkable attack — on nuclear power plants.
If the improbable happened and terrorists managed to attack and penetrate a nuclear reactor core at a power plant, it could trigger an explosive meltdown that could spread radiation for hundreds of miles and trigger lethal health problems, if not immediate death among large populations. An undercover intruder could wreak similar havoc by sabotaging a plant from the inside.
Officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others emphasize that such events are highly unlikely and claim that facilities are protected against attacks.
But it's clear the idea has been considered, if not by terrorists, then at least by terrorist impersonators. Last week, two airports near the Three Mile Island nuclear facility near Harrisburg, Pa., were closed after authorities said they had received a "credible" threat against the plant. By Thursday morning, the threat was dismissed and airports were reopened.
The false alert was a reminder of the vigilant defense needed at nuclear power plants. Some point to the 1986 accidental Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine, which killed as many as 2,500 people, as an example of possible damages wrought by a nuclear power plant meltdown.
Daniel Hirsch, president of the Los Angeles-based nuclear watchdog group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, recently told reporters gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that nuclear reactors are "among the most high-value targets that we have in the United States."
NRC: We Are Ready
The NRC is vague but confident when asked if the 103 nuclear plants across the United States are braced against attack.
"Yes, we are ready. We can't say how, but we are ready," said NRC spokesman Victor Dricks.
One line of defense is the structures that enclose nuclear reactors. Although they vary slightly in design, NRC guidelines stipulate that containment buildings be designed to withstand the impact of a bomb or small plane. That durability was proven in a 1989 test when Sandia National Labs in New Mexico sent a rocket-propelled F-4 fighter jet into a containment wall at 480 miles per hour. The jet disintegrated while the wall sustained only 2.4 inches of penetration.
"Typically these are concrete structures that are reinforced with steel that can be 10 feet thick or more," said Al Ghorbanpoor, a civil engineer at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee who has provided consulting in design for nuclear power plants. "They have been designed to sustain a large bomb impact, and the impact of a small plane, but if you're talking about a 747, I'm not sure."
No similar tests have been done using large passenger airplanes like the ones that hijackers flew into the World Trade Center Sept. 11. But Dricks claims even a large plane could not penetrate to the reactor core of these facilities. Still, Hirsch and others have called for extra caution and for positioning antiaircraft weaponry around nuclear power plants to fend off aerial suicide attacks.
France's defense minister recently announced that such measures have been taken to protect that nation's main nuclear waste processing plant. The NRC has not responded, at least publicly, to such requests.
Nuclear Waste: Small Targets?
Although a strike against a nuclear reactor core would wreak the greatest damage, there are other elements at nuclear power plants that could also be vulnerable.
Nuclear reactors in the United States have generated an estimated 45,000 tons of waste, which emit high levels of dangerous radioactive particles. The waste is being stored in temporary tanks or concrete and steel bunkers on site at nuclear power plants as debate over where and how to store it permanently continues. Some fear these storage facilities could also be targeted.
Dricks says all pools containing nuclear waste are enclosed in "robust" structures and that the steel bunkers are also secure — to a degree. Their best defense, he says, is their size.
"They're not required to withstand the impact of a large airplane," Dricks said. "But striking one would be extremely difficult because they're small."
Kim Kearfott, a professor of radiation safety at the University of Michigan, spent last year working at Detroit Edison's Fermi II Nuclear Plant and other plants in Michigan and is confident materials from these plants are safe from attack.
"These places are tightly protected," she said. "In fact, I feel safer at the plant than I do here in my office."
Attack From Within
Even if nuclear facilities are bolstered against terrorist raids and attacks, there remains the prospect of undercover intruders gaining access to vital controls at a nuclear power plant.
To prepare for such incidents, the NRC conducts regular drills and sends in would-be terrorists to see if they could take over or disable a plant. The drills are taped and then reviewed for possible flaws. Reports have indicated that since 1991, about half of the drills have revealed potential vulnerabilities. According to Hirsch, these drills did not incorporate the possibility that there could be large groups of possibly suicidal terrorists.
But Dricks says that since identifying potential weaknesses, the NRC has rapidly increased security. And since the attacks, he says, "some scenarios or threats that had not deemed credible or likely have been reconsidered."
In addition to increased patrol of the sites, security background checks have been re-run for all employees at nuclear power plants — even ones who have worked there for years.