Re: Nuclear experts doubt terror risk

[maury <maury@WEBTEXAS.COM>]

The article below might not be identical to the one in Science, but I

believe it to be very close. This was on Radsafe earlier and I have sent

it far and wide to news media, but I don't know how to do this

successfully. The media didn't pick it up until it appeared in Science

which in turn gave the media an opportunity to sensationalize an

argument by publishing the vituperative rebuttal by Lyman and his

Nuclear Control Institute. This summary by Ted and others of the

National Engineering Academy should, I believe, have gotten wide

publicity when it was first released.

Cheers,

Maury Siskel      maury@webtexas.com

=======================================

Subject: I. Summary. Nuclear Power Plant Vulnerability

   Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2002 23:51:20 -0500





SUMMARY I.  NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS AS TERRORIST

TARGETS



July 2002



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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