posted on September 17, 2001 05:23:26 AM new
I'm trying not to panic or be melodramatic, but wanted some opinions on what others think my options are. I live near a nuclear plant, only 11 miles away, my parents and sister are only about 4 miles away.
What do you think the odds are that any terrorists would try something at a nuclear energy plant?
posted on September 17, 2001 05:30:33 AM newWhat do you think the odds are that any terrorists would try something at a nuclear energy plant?
Security at these nuclear plants is very high, always has been, and now even more so. As much as a terrorist would love to sabotage a nuclear power plant the engineered fail-safe systems would make it all but impossible.
A terrorist would be able to create more panic by going into a grocery store and casually sprinkling some poison in the salad bar or the produce section.
I work for a utility traded on the NYSE that owns a nuclear plant.
I live only about an hour away from the plant, and I would say ...
What the previous poster said is true, that security is high at nuclear plants, but since Sept. 11, please be prepared for anything. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security. Make sure you are right with your God, and daily tell your family that you love them. And somehow find the courage to go on with your regular routine.
posted on September 17, 2001 07:19:09 AM new
I agree with the other posters that the terrorists have so many other easier targets that a commercial reactor is a lousy target.
However I live within the potential plume of a power reactor and I keep a radiation monitor from S.E. International on my desk that will tell me if we experience an increase in local level because I have noticed that the authorities sit around wringing their hands for a week before telling you that you have been exposed but not to worry about it.
An external assault on a reactor complex would be very difficult but an act of sabotage from inside would be much easier.
If you want to read a chilling but fictional account of how such an Islamic assault would work in a petroleum refinery read the first chapter of Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. Fiction but very plausible.
posted on September 17, 2001 08:32:05 AM new
The bar where I used to drink on an all too regular basis was just aroud the corner from NRC headquarters. It's where the engineers on the emergency response team used to drink on a somewhat more occasional basis. Over the years, I got to know a number of them pretty well. A more intelligent bunch you won't find. Also, a more arrogant bunch you won't find.
Over the years I had a lot of pretty in depth discussions with about a half dozen of them, and the one thing I took away from it is that they view things through a very different lens than most people do.
For example, each one, without exception, considered Three Mile Island a stone-cold hands-down no-contest tear-down-the-goal-posts "win". In their minds, the containment vessel didn't rupture. No matter how close it came to a complete meltdown (and it got more than halfway there), and no matter that it didn't do so from luck at least as much as from skill or design.
Which means anything that's claimed with respect to structural or other systems engineering in a nuclear power plant is something I take with a grain of salt the size of a Buick. If Chernobyl had been within US borders, I sincerely believe most of them would have described it as "not really a very big problem". It's not hand-wringing that keeps folks like this from issuing warnings in a timely fashion. It's denial.
That said, I don't think I'd move in your situation. Even if there are more cells of mentally imbalanced sheep getting ready to make more things blow up, the sheer number of targest is enormous. And security at most of them is far more lax than at the average power plant. Resevoirs, communication hubs, and port facilities seem like the most vulnerable point targets. Pipelines and high capacity power lines coming out of the plants seem like the most vulnerable linear targets. Most of these things are designed to handle stuff that nature throws at it, and nature's just indifferent, not malevolent.
Carrying on our lives as close to "normally" as we can manage is, to my mind, the best thing folks can do.
-gaffan- [email protected]
posted on September 17, 2001 08:55:08 AM new
Do you know just south of Detroit is a nuclear plant Fermi II and despite the name when I ask people what happened to Fermi I nobody seems to know!
The truth is that they lost the core to Fermi I in a disaster. It did not breach the vessal either but it did run away bad enough to melt fuel rods and supporting structure in the core. The plant was a complete write off and military personnel ( including the future Jimmy Carter ) were flown in from all over the country to dismantle the wreck. They would show polaroids and models to the men so they could dash in and work for 15 or 20 minutes until their maximum exposure was up and them fly them home. You can imaigine how expensive it was to decommission a plant flying people in and training them to do 20 minutes work! We are still paying on our electric bill for this.
If you want to read about it get the book "We Almost Lost Detroit"
posted on September 17, 2001 05:27:45 PM new
right now, the smart thing would be for all of us to cut back on electricity as much as possible, shut down as many of these plants as we can, BUT make it look like they are all still running, (Yeah, it means a lot of people would have to keep their mouths shut.) and bury the fuel in a few old salt mines some place. That way, if they did hit one of the plants, we at least have a chance of it being a "wet firecracker".
posted on September 18, 2001 11:10:37 AM new
Graham, chairman of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Orlando Sentinel that hijacked airliners were only one facet of a widespread plan by a cabal of terrorists likely headed by Osama bin Laden.
The Florida Democrat was briefed about the findings Sunday by the Central Intelligence Agency.
"There has been very credible evidence gathered since Tuesday that Tuesday's attacks were not designed to be a one-day event," he said. "There were other acts of terrorism in the United States and elsewhere that were part of this plan."
Other attacks likely would not have involved commandeered airliners, Graham said.
"Not necessarily hijacking another airliner, but maybe putting a chemical in a city's water system, or blowing up a bridge in a major urban center," he said.
Officials don't know precisely what kind of weapons are at the disposal of bin Laden and his terrorist cells scattered across the globe.
While bin Laden-linked terrorists have successfully used car- and boat-based bombs, the Islamic extremist also has tried to acquire components to build nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, according to international security experts who cite intelligence reports.
And, experts warn, his arsenal could include more unorthodox weapons - as unexpected as flying fuel-laden passenger jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The one thing several experts agree on is that the terrorists want to spawn widespread death.
"They're going to try and find places with larger numbers of people and that are highly symbolic, where they can cause a lot of destruction and panic and bring attention to their cause," said P.W. Singer, a security and intelligence scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
As recently as Sunday morning, Graham said, intelligence agencies worried that follow-up attacks still might take place. He said he could not identify possible targets of other attacks, and would not reveal how U.S. intelligence agencies learned of the plans.
