Nuclear experts doubt terror risk

[Susan L Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Nuclear experts doubt terror risk - Group of scientists downplays threat

to nation's plants

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0209200257sep20.story 



By Julie Deardorff

Tribune staff reporter

September 20, 2002



Fears about the calamitous effect of a terrorist attack on a nuclear

power plant or its fuel are exaggerated, more than a dozen of the

nation's experts on nuclear energy said in a policy statement published

Friday in the journal Science.



Though it pulls together an esteemed group of authorities, the statement

received a mixed reaction from within the field. In June the National

Academies' Committee on Science and Technology to Counter Terrorism

published a report with several findings contrary to the statement in

Science.



Basic engineering and the laws of nature limit the amount of damage

terrorists can wreak on nuclear power plants and their fuel, according

to the statement, which was spearheaded by Theodore Rockwell, a retired

engineer, and signed by 18 of his nuclear power colleagues. All are

members of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.



"It's easy to pander to the worst fears of people who really are not

knowledgeable," said Alan Schriesheim, director emeritus of Argonne

National Laboratory, near Lemont, and one of the 19 co-authors. The

statement should help "alleviate some fears," he said.



Still, despite the grouping of industry experts and academics, there is

no consensus on reactor safety within the nuclear power field. Rockwell

approached 27 members of the engineering academy; 18 signed the

statement, he said.



Richard Garwin, a scientist and academy member who did not support the

statement, agrees that shipping casks for reactor fuel are unlikely to

cause death or significant damage if attacked by aircraft or explosives.

But Garwin, who contributed to a chapter on reactor safety in the June

report for the National Academies, said he disagreed with much of the

rest of the piece.



"We were unable to come to such comforting conclusions as did the

authors in Science," Garwin said.



Examining the threats



The heavily annotated Science statement challenges notions that the

casks used to transport fuel could be unsafe and that an airplane could

fly through a reinforced wall surrounding a nuclear reactor, causing a

meltdown. It also explains why the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979

and the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 are not examples of threats in

the current climate.



Casks cannot explode, and there is no liquid radioactivity to leak out,

according to the article. They have been tested against collisions,

explosives, fire and water.



"Only the latest antitank artillery could breach them, and then the

result was to scatter a few chunks of spent fuel onto the ground,"

Rockwell wrote.



The statement also says no airplane, regardless of size, can fly through

the reinforced, steel-lined 1.5-meter-thick concrete walls surrounding a

nuclear reactor, based on calculations and a test that was conducted in

1988.



In the experiment, an unmanned plane was mounted on rails and crashed

into a wall at 480 miles per hour. The plane, including its fuel tanks,

collapsed against the outside of the wall, penetrating only a few

centimeters. The plane's engines penetrated deeper, but still only 5

centimeters.



David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned

Scientists, has viewed the film of the 1988 test.



"What [the statement] doesn't point out is that this concrete was

floating on an air cushion, so when it was hit, it moved," he said.

"Most walls are anchored. It's not going to be pushed aside like a

bowling pin, so it will have to absorb more of that energy."



Also, Lochbaum said, "The plane they used was an old F-4 fighter jet,

which doesn't have the weight of what we saw on Sept. 11, and there was

no fuel in it. That won't add a great deal of weight, but there are

potential fire concerns. That's what brought down the towers."



In the June report Garwin and his colleagues found that an attack on a

nuclear power plant could have potentially severe consequences if it was

large enough.



"The severity is highly dependent on the specific design configuration

of the nuclear power plant, including details such as the location of

specific safety equipment," according to the report.



`Not to be feared'



Another point in the statement is that the public's concerns about

radiation are overstated--and not challenged by nuclear advocates--which

has scared people away from mammograms and other life-saving treatments,

Rockwell said. The fear has allowed many Americans to die from pathogens

that could have been killed by food irradiation and piled regulations on

nuclear medicine facilities that caused many to shut down, the statement

said.



Chauncey Starr, 90, founder and president emeritus of the Electric Power

Research Group, said the policy statement had two objectives: "One was

to remove the focus of the nuclear plant as a target. The second was to

reassure the public that low-level radiation is a useful adjunct to

society and not something to be feared."



Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune 

-- 

.....................................................

Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director

Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee

102 Robertsville Road, Suite B, Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Toll free 888-770-3073 ~ www.local-oversight.org

.....................................................

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