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Nuclear Plants Adequately Guarded, Court Rules
The government can rely on the nation's defenses to prevent terrorist attacks from the air on nuclear power plants and doesn't have to order operators to take additional measures, a federal appeals court has ruled.
In this Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005 picture, smoke billows from two active cooling towers of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pa. The power plant is nestled on an island in the middle of the Susquehanna River.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected claims by critics of the nuclear industry, joined by the states of California and New York, that current measures to guard the plants from attacks by land and water fail to address the dangers of aerial assaults.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reasonably concluded that U.S. military and security forces would thwart most potential air attacks and that design changes and safety plans it has required "would likely prevent any serious harm," Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall said in the majority opinion Friday.
In dissent, Judge Sidney Thomas said the commission had ignored studies that concluded an airplane strike on a nuclear plant could cause catastrophic damage. One New York study found that even a light plane could cause a core meltdown if it hit a plant's control building, Thomas said.
The commission "owes the public a rational and reasonable explanation why it would exclude from its (safety) rule consideration of terrorist air attacks," Thomas said.
He did not suggest any specific protective measures. Among those the plaintiffs proposed were shields of connected I-beams and netting around key structures.
The ruling "allows the (commission) to give greater consideration to the financial interest of the nuclear industry than to the health and safety of the public," said Jane Swanson, spokeswoman for the anti-nuclear group San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, which took part in the suit.
Mothers for Peace also sued the commission over its approval of a new nuclear waste storage site at the Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo. The group won a ruling from the appeals court in 2006 requiring the regulatory agency to consider the environmental consequences of a terrorist attack before allowing operations.
The commission then issued a report finding that an attack would cause no significant damage. Swanson's group has asked the appeals court to reject the report and close the storage site.
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7 Comments so far
Show AllUS nuclear power plants were designed to take a direct impact from a fully fueled 707 without breaching any containment vessels.
I believed this until 9/11 when skyscrapers, also designed to withstand the direct impact of large aircraft, crumbled.
Now I am in a "suck it and see" state of mind.
You are correct WTF, And the Boeing 707 weighs in the neighborhood of 320,000 lbs giving it the designation of "Heavy" on ATC freqs.
But probably at that time in 1957, when the B707 was the heaviest transport flying, that standard was a good one. Not anymore. Now over a thousand B-747's ply the skies at weights of over 800,000 lbs. The ones I flew had a MGTOW of 820,000 and over double the fuel load of a 707. Fuel=temperature. Temperature burns through steel.
Is is very unlikely that the dozens of containment vessels built a half a century ago under those inadequate standards could withstand a B-747 impact. We would be looking at a mini Chernobyl, which could expose millions across the country if the cloud got carried by the jet steam across the country.
Somehow we have got to get away from people with no background in these critical subjects being allowed to sit as a judge. This is an incompetent justice decision that puts us all at peril.
Nuclear power is not safe no matter what you do. An Earthquake, Tsunami, Hurricane or Tornado could achieve the same effect. Who cares if solar is inefficient or costly. It won't make half the states uninhabitable for six hundred years.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Nuclear plants are like mercenaries, a lot more trouble than they are worth.
I think maybe something besides airplanes helped bring down those towers.
While the "cooling towers" at TMI are correctly identified as such, they mistakenly identify the effluent as "smoke" (product of combustion).
It is NOT smoke, but mist (condensate) from vapor evaporated inside the tower from the warm water entering near the top of the tower that has been heated by steam condensers inside the main plant.
With only ten million or so in modifications, one of these could be converted into a "test" Atmospheric Vortex Engine that could generate a lot of additional energy and return the investment in a matter of months. (Ref: http://vortexengine.ca )
Ultimately, warm water that would power future devices, could be obtained from different "waste heat" sources, such as geothermal, and not be dependent on waste heat from coal or nuclear plants.
"The government can rely on the nation's defenses to prevent terrorist attacks from the air on nuclear power plants and doesn't have to order operators to take additional measures, a federal appeals court has ruled."
You've all seen those sheet metal shed buildings. Some are used for barns, others for garages, some even house businesses. They are as flimsy as a mobile home, and a tornado would easily destroy one of them.
Well, here in Three Mile Island Country, that type of sheet metal shed is all that protects the huge storage pool where "spent", yet highly radioactive, fuel is stored. How many other storage pools are as well "protected"?
Murphy's Law dictates that it is only a matter of time before one of these storage shed/storage pool structures is hit by a tornado, or an errant airliner, spreading spent fuel over who knows how many tens or hundreds of square miles. A hurricane could be even worse. Talk about a "dirty bomb"! It is not the control room or the reactor containment structure that worries me. It is the poorly protected storage pools.
Can our "nation's defenses prevent" TORNADO "attacks from the air on nuclear power plants", and therefore there is no need "to order operators to take additional measures"?
don't we all are tired of brething the exhaust sistems and wathing others who have minimum public decency, going nucear
edweg