and just in case we've forgotten, terrorists don't care if they risk their own persons, as long as their goal is furthered, their own death is a feature, not a bug.
to reiterate: it's not so much the nuke plant that needs security (though any idiot knows why that is so), its the people who live around them who need security and protection, and deserve corporations who milk them to be accountable and most of all truthful, and government who doesn't collude in hoodwinking us, and hypersubsidising the wrong choices, while poo-poohing the right ones.
and while starvid blames the media for hyping the negative aspects and amplifying possible panic, would any of us trust the media parroting the corporations' spiel about how safe and foolproof it is?
objectivity....for sale to the trickiest talker, rented by highest bidder. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
No, they are U238, the non-fissile uranium isotope. This doesn't come from nuclear reactor waste but from the enrichment process.
Yes, people need protection, that's why the nuclear industry is heavily regulated.
No, we don't trust the media parroting the industry. We do our own research. Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/nuclear_safety/spent-reactor-fuel-security.html
The spent fuel pools for nuclear power plants with boiling water reactors are located above ground in the building surrounding the primary reactor containment structure. This can make some boiling water reactors even more vulnerable. The reactor containment structure is often a steel-lined, reinforced concrete building whereas the spent fuel pool building is usually made simply of reinforced concrete. An aircraft--or missile--would not need to completely level the fuel building to cause harm. It would merely need to crack the concrete wall or floor of the spent fuel pool and drain the water out. The spent fuel pool is designed to remain intact following an earthquake, but it is not designed to withstand aircraft impacts and explosive forces. What about spent fuel stored in dry casks? When the spent fuel pool in the "attic" of the nuclear plant fills up, some of the highly radioactive fuel assemblies are loaded into large casks and stored outside on concrete pads. Weapons available on the black market, and even some that can be legitimately purchased in the U.S., or explosives could cause the casks to be penetrated resulting in the release of large amounts of radiation. At some plants, the casks are line-of-sight visible from open access (i.e., unsecured) areas while other plants place casks inside unguarded chain-link fences. What should the NRC do about spent fuel security? Easy. Existing federal regulations (10 CFR 73.55) require plant owners to provide adequate security to protect spent fuel-- whether stored in pools or casks-- from radiological sabotage. All the NRC needs to do is simply enforce regulations already on the books. No more studies are required, no more rulemaking is needed, no more evaluations are necessary, and no more delays are warranted.
The reactor containment structure is often a steel-lined, reinforced concrete building whereas the spent fuel pool building is usually made simply of reinforced concrete.
An aircraft--or missile--would not need to completely level the fuel building to cause harm. It would merely need to crack the concrete wall or floor of the spent fuel pool and drain the water out. The spent fuel pool is designed to remain intact following an earthquake, but it is not designed to withstand aircraft impacts and explosive forces.
What about spent fuel stored in dry casks?
When the spent fuel pool in the "attic" of the nuclear plant fills up, some of the highly radioactive fuel assemblies are loaded into large casks and stored outside on concrete pads. Weapons available on the black market, and even some that can be legitimately purchased in the U.S., or explosives could cause the casks to be penetrated resulting in the release of large amounts of radiation. At some plants, the casks are line-of-sight visible from open access (i.e., unsecured) areas while other plants place casks inside unguarded chain-link fences.
What should the NRC do about spent fuel security?
Easy. Existing federal regulations (10 CFR 73.55) require plant owners to provide adequate security to protect spent fuel-- whether stored in pools or casks-- from radiological sabotage. All the NRC needs to do is simply enforce regulations already on the books. No more studies are required, no more rulemaking is needed, no more evaluations are necessary, and no more delays are warranted.
i'm glad these folks are on the case. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
CASTOR have been mentioned by DoDo recently:
I note that current chancellor Angela Merkel is also close to nuclear power. She used to be a physicist, first came into Helmut Kohl's conservative government to oversee R&D, and was then environment minister. It was during the latter time that the big scandal of nuclear waste transport containers (named Castor) blew, e.g. that contamination was found on their outside with radiation levels that were orders of magnitude above the limit (up to 3000 times). In the run-up to the scandal, Merkel rejected all doubts. once it blew big, she made a stand against the companies, acting all outraged. A cunning and cynical move foreshadowing a great tactician: wasn't it her ministry, as oversight authority, that should have caught this at home, or pressed the French authorities for better information flow?
I have had a very heated argument about CASTOR with DoDo, by the way.
DoDo: the point with the security risk was: if treehugger protesters with a simple infrastructure can accomplish trespassing, so can a terror group with military training, and they wouldn't just want to stop the train. ... DoDo: ... no CASTOR can be hurt by a simple derailment ... (In fact CASTOR containers were marketed as indestructible, with videos showing them thrown from airplanes and hitting the ground hard, though later it was found that some hard operation can cause structural damage.)
...
DoDo: ... no CASTOR can be hurt by a simple derailment ... (In fact CASTOR containers were marketed as indestructible, with videos showing them thrown from airplanes and hitting the ground hard, though later it was found that some hard operation can cause structural damage.)
uh-huh, aren't depleted uranium munitions a byproduct of nuclear fission?
Err, no. Depleted uranium is the by-product from the isotopic separation step before the uranium is used as fuel. It's produced before any fission takes place.
Natural uranium coming from the mine is composed of 0.0054% U-234, 0.7204% U-235 and 99.2742% U-238. Light water reactors need a higher proportion of U-235 - 3 to 5% - to sustain nuclear fission. The isotopic separation does that. It concentrate the U-235 on one side and on the other side outputs depleted uranium with 0.4 to 0.1% of U-235 left.
Depleted uranium never sees the inside of a nuclear reactor. Actually, that's the whole point of the isotopic separation.
I don't know why that idea about depleted uranium coming out of a reactor is so prevalent. It must be a confusion with recycled uranium.
