Re: NPP containment strength

[SAFarberMSPH@CS.COM]

In a message dated 9/13/01 11:03:24 AM Pacific Daylight Time, welch@jlab.org 

writes:



> Subj:Re: NPP containment strength
>
> Date:9/13/01 11:03:24 AM Pacific Daylight Time
>
> From:    welch@jlab.org (Keith Welch)
>
> Sender:    owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu



I remember seein an interesting set of photos (but can't remember the 

publication - Nuclear News, maybe) of a test of containment strength.  A 

large block of containment-type concrete was used as a target for a jet 

crash.  If I remember, something resembling a

fighter jet was "launched" along a track under jet power and slammed into the 

block at very high speed.  The jet disentigrated, and the block was barely 

scratched.  This is obviously not a thorough test of a complete structure, 

but it confirms the capability

of the structural material.

==========


Radsafe


It's likely that the fanatics who planned the recent attacks realized  that 

attacking a nuclear power plant using a commercial airliner would not achieve 

the structural damage, loss of life, consequences, and shock value they hoped 

to achieve. They may be fanatics but they are shrewd and calculating 

fanatics, and wanted to achieve maximum shock value in showing US 

"vulnerability" by striking out and cutting off the "head of the snake" [to 

use their rhetoric]. 


The past few day's tragic events would likely have been far less tragic if 

the terrorists had mistakenly  thought they could achieve their "goals" by 

crashing a commercial jet into a commercial nuclear power plant containment. 

After the dust had settled at an NPP and the external fires burned out, there 

would most likely have been substantial onsite damage, total destruction of 

the plane and loss of all passengers, many onsite injuries and deaths, but 

not the incredibly massive, and tragic loss of life being uncovered at the 

World Trade Center. We can only pray more people are pulled alive from the 

rubble.


In any case, let's all hope steps are quickly taken to heighten security both 

on the ground and in the air to be sure such a thing never, ever happens 

whether as an act of  incomprehensible terrorism  or from the acts of a 

deranged individual.


Stewart Farber

Public Health Sciences

email: SAFarberMSPH@cs.com