RE: Nuclear Regulators: Attack Risk Low

[maury <maury@WEBTEXAS.COM>]

For what it might be worth, I've sent this summary (shown below) to a

variety of newspapers and other news media as well as to a wide circle

of friends and relatives. It is not as quantitative as some might wish,

but

in principle I believe it is worth repeating here again. The

quantitative

studies are great, but as soon as controlled tests are conducted with

an F-4 Phantom twin engine fighter, all the opponents of nuclear power

trot out a newer bigger airplane, and so on.



I could inspire more civil terror with a simple backyard trebuchet than

could I or anyone else with a rented Cessna 182 circling the NPP at

Comanche Peak even if they were willing to make it a suicide flight. In

point of fact, the federal official was mistaken: the so-called warning

about circling and loitering near NPP's was/is not even a warning; it is



an FAA Advisory Circular which includes also other power plants,

military facilities,  dams, refineries, and industrial complexes. If

these

were prohibitions, one almost might wonder where one could still fly.



A major problem with some official statements rests more with what

they refuse to say instead of making the weak statements they are

willing to make. True, the recent NRC statement does not suggest

thousands of deaths from an NPP incident, BUT the statement does

little to refute such sensational silliness that other experts have

suggested. I do not understand the actual willingness of various

federal agencies to promote public fear by refusal to refute public

assertions promoting those fears. We seem to have reached the

national point of demanding that one MUST NOT be mistaken. Zero

tolerance is nutty as the proverbial fruitcake! (And I mean nutty as

in mentally ill.)

Wistfully,

Maury Siskel            maury@webtexas.com,

____________________________

Sent 8 July 2002



Fifteen members of the National Academy of Engineering prepared and

released the summary below. Their summary is an unemotional, responsible



presentation of facts surrounding the vulnerability of nuclear power

plants and expended nuclear fuel shipments to threats by terrorists.





NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS AS TERRORIST TARGETS



If you watch TV's "The West Wing" or "Crossfire," or read

Congressman Markey 's recently stated concern about nuclear

power plants as terrorist targets, you would be justified in

believing that spent nuclear fuel casks being shipped to

Nevada for storage are each a nuclear catastrophe just

waiting to be triggered.  These casks have been called

"Mobile Chernobyls," and we are told they are capable of

causing "tens of thousands of deaths."  What are the facts?



Since 9-11 the nuclear industry and its regulators have been

re-evaluating plant safety.  These studies are properly being

kept secret.  But it is no secret that basic engineering facts and

laws of nature limit the damage that can result.  Extensive

analysis, backed by full-scale field tests, show that there is

virtually nothing one could do to these shipping casks that

would cause a significant public hazard.  Before shipment,

the fuel elements have been cooled for several years, so the

decay heat and the short-lived radioactivity have died down.

They cannot explode, and there is no liquid radioactivity to

leak out.  They are nearly indestructible, having been tested

against collisions, explosives, fire and water.  Only the latest

anti-tank artillery could breach them, and then, the result was

to scatter a few chunks of spent fuel onto the ground.  There

seems to be no reason to expect harmful effects of the

radiation any significant distance from the cask.



Similarly, we read that airplanes can fly through the

reinforced, steel-lined five-foot thick concrete walls

surrounding a nuclear reactor, and inevitably cause a

meltdown resulting in "tens of thousands of deaths" and

"make a huge area of the U. S. uninhabitable for centuries,"

to quote some recent stories.  However,  there seems to be no

credible way to achieve that result.  No airplane, regardless of

size, can fly through such a wall. This has been calculated in

detail and tested in 1988 by flying an unmanned plane at

480mph into a test wall.  The plane, including its fuel tanks,

collapsed against the outside of the wall, penetrating less than

an inch. The engines are a better penetrator, but still dug in

only two inches. Analyses show that larger planes fully offset

their greater impact with greater energy absorption during

collapse.  Higher speed increases the impact, but not enough

to matter.  And inside containment  are additional walls of

concrete and steel protecting the reactor.



Is it possible to cause a nuclear reactor to melt down?  Yes, it

happened at Three Mile Island (TMI) in 1979.  Reactors are

much improved since then, and the probability of such an

accident is now much less.  But suppose it happens, through

terrorist action or other; what then?  Well, the TMI meltdown

caused no environmental degradation and no injury to any

person. Not even to the plant operators who stayed on duty.

It has been said that this lack of public impact was due

primarily to the containment structure. But studies after the

accident showed that nearly all of the harmful fission

products dissolved in the water and condensed out on the

inside containment surfaces.  Even if containment had been

severely breached, little radioactivity would have escaped.

Few, if any, persons would have been harmed.



To test how far the 10-20 tons of molten reactor penetrated

the five-inch bottom of the reactor vessel on which it rested,

samples were machined out of the vessel and examined.  The

molten mass did not even fully penetrate the 3/16 inch

cladding, confirming tests in Karlsruhe, Germany, and in

Idaho, that the "China Syndrome" is not a credible possibility.



The accident at Chernobyl in 1986 is simply not applicable to

American reactors.  The burning graphite dispersed most of

the fission products directly into the atmosphere.  Even in that

situation, with no evacuation for several days, the United

Nations' carefully documented investigation

UNSCEAR-2000 reported that there were 30 deaths to plant

operators and firefighters, but no deaths or increased cancer

due to irradiation of the public.  The 1800 reported cases of

treatable childhood thyroid nodules do not seem to correlate

with radiation exposure and are still being studied. The

terrible and widespread consequences of that accident

increased suicide, alcoholism, depression and unemployment,

plus 100,000 unnecessary abortions were caused primarily by

fear of radiation, and misplanning based on that fear.  The

evacuated lands are generally no more radioactive than the

natural background levels where many people have lived

healthily for generations



It's not surprising that some people overstate the concern, for

whatever reason.   But it is surprising that nuclear advocates

are reluctant to challenge such claims.  They say they don't

want to be viewed as downplaying dangers or being unwilling

to do whatever safety requires.  They want to be cautious.

But striving for maximum caution leads to the assertion that

we should act as if even the tiniest amount of radiation might

be harmful, despite the large body of good scientific evidence

that it is not.  This policy has scared people away from

mammograms and other life-saving treatments, and caused

thousands of Americans to die each year from pathogens that

could have been killed by food irradiation.  It has piled

regulations on nuclear medicine facilities that caused many of

them to shut down.  And now, "permissible doses" have been

pushed below those found in natural radiation backgrounds.



Such cautiousness has drawbacks when applied to design and

operation of nuclear facilities  But it is particularly dangerous

when applied to terrorism. To tell people that they and the

earth are in mortal danger from events that cannot cause

significant public harm is to play into the hands of terrorists

by making a minor event a cause for life-endangering panic.

Now is the time to clear the air and speak a few simple

scientific and engineering truths.



This statement was prepared and endorsed by the following

scientific authorities on nuclear energy technology.  They

have all held prominent positions in government, academia or

industry.  They are all members of the National Academy of

Engineering but this statement does not constitute an official

statement of the Academy.





Dr. Douglas M. Chapin    Mr. Milton Levinson

Mr. Alexander Squire       Dr. Karl P. Cohen

Dr. I. Harry Mandil        Dr. Chauncey Starr

Mr. Edwin E. Kintner       Dr. Zack T. Pate

Mr. Henry E. Stone         Dr. Leonard J. Koch

Dr. Theodore Rockwell      Prof. Neil E. Todreas

Dr. John W. Landis         Mr. John W. Simpson

Dr. Edwin L. Zebroski











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