RE: Can nuclear reactors survive a terrorist attack?

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@AECL.CA>]

I thought that the Sandia crash test video really "saved" the program -- imagine what it would have been like without it -- pretty one-sided :  the antis got to parade Chernobyl again, with no hint at all given to the audience that it had no containment dome and that the huge pile of burning graphite (absent in LWRs) greatly aggravated the fallout situation (never mind the rest of the long list of design deficiencies and contraventions of operating rules...).

The CBS crew did a good job of contrasting the glass WTC buildings to the steel & concrete of NPPs.

OTOH, there was no mention of the lack of off-site radiological consequences of the TMI meltdown, during the part about armed terrorist ground attack on NPPs -- the implication that the viewer was left with was, again, a Chernobyl-type disaster -- reinforced by Levethal's ravings about "thousands of casualties."

 

Late last week, at my request, my colleague Jeremy added some graphic information to his new FAQ item on how nuclear plants are protected from terrorist attacks ( at http://www.ncf.ca/~cz725/cnf_sectionD.htm#terrorist ), concerning structures "within the outer containment building visible at most nuclear stations (e.g. the Gentilly-2 and Pt. Lepreau CANDU plants in Canada) are further levels of heavy concrete enclosures <http://www.magma.ca/~whitlock/cnf/containment.jpg> (including a "reactor vault" surrounding the core itself, consisting of at minimum 4-foot-thick concrete walls in CANDU plants)"  ....it shows the reactor (in red) nestled inside a veritable maze of walls...

 

Anyone know when the digitised version of that Sandia crash test video will be put on their web site ?

 

Thanks.

Jaro

From: jenday1 [mailto:jenday1@EMAIL.MSN.COM]

Sent: Sunday October 14, 2001 11:19 PM

To: RADSAFE

Subject: Can nuclear reactors survive a terrorist attack?

 

If you saw the "60 Minutes" segment on nuclear reactor safety last night,

what did you think of it?

-- John