cont:
No one interviewed by UPI was aware of a study done on the effect of a Boeing 767 crashing into a nuclear power plant. Robert Henry, a mechanical engineer who evaluates severe accidents at nuclear plants told UPI: "Designs that took into account airplane crashes were more likely to be incorporated into plants near airports or military airfields. Some were built with protection against crashing airplanes and some were not."
Henry, a senior vice president of Fauske and Associates, which is owned by Westinghouse Electric Corp., said he believes containment structures in general are relatively resistant to being breached by an airplane, due to being over-engineered.
A spokesperson for one nuclear power plant, Seabrook Station in New Hampshire, said his facility was built to withstand the impact of a bomber crashing into it.
"The unique design of the Seabrook dome is designed, unlike a lot of other plants, to withstand the impact of a bomber-sized aircraft," Alan Griffith said.
The proximity of Pease Air Force Base at the time of construction led to the design but Griffith would not specify the type of bomber upon which the design was based. A Boeing B-52 bomber has a maximum weight of 488,000 pounds. A fully loaded Boeing 767-400ER weighs 450,000 pounds at takeoff.
Concerns about the more severe scenarios that experts consider possible are causing the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute to call for immediate security measures. NCI's research director, Steven Dolley, told UPI, "We believe that it's not likely that the containment of these reactors could withstand a direct hit from a very large jetliner such as a 767 or a 747."
[b]NCI has called for the placement of anti-aircraft guns at nuclear power plants and the immediate mobilization of the National Guard to protect nuclear power installations.[/b]
"There are vulnerable elements at nuclear power plants that are not within the containment building," Dolley said. "You wouldn't need to crash an airplane into the containment building to wreak a great deal of havoc. There are some points of vulnerability not within the containment building that if destroyed in an attack could trigger a melt down." Some scenarios show an area the size of Pennsylvania being radioactively contaminated, he added.
A number of experts interviewed expressed concern about spent nuclear fuel, which now is stored outside the containment structure in casks. The casks have been subjected to drop tests and fire tests that have been criticized by some as not being rigorous enough. The threat against nuclear power plants is real, according to Yonah Alexander, who has studied terrorism for 40 years and is director of the International Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute in Arlington, Va.
Alexander said he has talked with dozens of terrorists around the world and they often have spoken about attacking a nuclear facility, though usually with a truck laden with explosives.
"There is no end to the imagination of the terrorists and they would be willing to resort to some super-terrorism incident because they do have motivation, they do have the networks, they do have the expertise and the scientists," Alexander told UPI.
(Reported by Joe Grossman in Santa Cruz, Calif.)