Sitting on a turbine deck , watching our machining / repair / testing equipment run , sometimes with plenty of time between cycles , I've sat there many-a-time at 3 in the morning , bored , running different scenarios through in my head . . . . . different ways that a determined terrorist could take out a turbine / generator .
Power lines and towers might take days or maybe weeks to fix , but a destroyed turbine would take months to get back online .
With that much weight ( the 15 - 20 + foot diameters of tons and tons of stainless and inconel ) spinning away at 3600 rpm , actions have catastrophic consequences
Thing is , rotors arent usually sitting on the shelf , readily available to swap out.
Ive been in the field now for 12 + years in the power generation biz , and Ive mentioned this very scenario here before . It aint a pretty thought.