Reply #17: LOL!!!!

[jpak]

Nuclear Plants Are Still Vulnerable, (Nat'l Academy) Panel Says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32383-2005Apr6.html

Three and a half years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the government has failed to address the risk that a passenger plane flying at high speed could be deliberately crashed into a commercial nuclear plant, setting off fires and dispersing large amounts of radiation, a long-awaited report by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded.

Officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have maintained that such an attack is improbable and that detailed analyses of the consequences of such attacks are unnecessary. Experts at the nation's premier scientific body said those judgments are flawed.

"There are currently no requirements in place to defend against the kinds of larger-scale, pre-meditated, skillful attacks that were carried out on September 11, 2001," a panel of scientists said, even as it agreed such an attack would be difficult to pull off.

<more>

Spent fuel pools at many US nuclear power plants are NOT housed in containment structures - and at some of the older BWR plants (Oyster Creek for one) the spent fuel pool is located ABOVE the reactor.

http://www.energybulletin.net/2178.html

Some of the new generation of nuclear power lack the robust containment structures of previous designs.

http://www.neis.org/literature/Reports&Testimonies/full_terrorist_report_10-22-01.htm

But there is nothing to worry about - "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile..."

:rofl: