Enformable
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Posted: 31 Mar 2016 08:11 AM
PDT
Pre-deployed weapons of mass
destruction.
That’s what nuclear power plants
are. And that’s another very big reason—demonstrated again in recent days
with the disclosure that two of the Brussels terrorists
were planning attacks on Belgian nuclear plants—why they must
be eliminated.
Nuclear power plants are sitting
ducks for terrorists. With most positioned along bays and rivers because of
their need for massive amounts of coolant water, they provide a clear shot.
They are fully exposed for aerial strikes.
The consequences of such an
attack could far outweigh the impacts of 9/11 and, according to the U.S. 9/11
Commission, also originally considered in that attack was the use of hijacked
planes to attack “unidentified nuclear power plants.” The Indian Point
nuclear plants 26 miles north of New York City were believed to be
candidates.
As the Belgian newspaper Dernier
Heure reported last week, regarding the plan to strike
a Belgian nuclear plant, “investigators concluded that the
target of terrorists was to ‘jeopardize national security like never
before.’”
The Union of Concerned Scientists
in a statement on
“Nuclear Security” declares:
“Terrorists pose a real and
significant threat to nuclear power plants. The 2011 accident at Fukushima
was a wake-up call reminding the world of the vulnerability of nuclear power
plants to natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. However, nature
is not the only threat to nuclear facilities. They are inviting targets for
sabotage and terrorist attack. A successful attack on a nuclear plant could
have devastating consequences, killing, sickening or displacing large numbers
of residents in the area surrounding the plant, and causing extensive
long-time environmental damage.”
A previously arranged “Nuclear
Security Summit” is being held this week in Washington, D.C. with representatives
of nations from around the world and with a focus on “nuclear terrorism.”
Last week, in advance of the
“summit” and in the wake of the Brussels suicide-bombings at the city’s
airport and a subway line, Yukiya Amano,
director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said:
“Terrorism is spreading and the possibility of using nuclear material cannot
be excluded. Member states need to have sustained interest in strengthening
nuclear security. The countries which do not recognize the danger of nuclear
terrorism is the biggest problem.”
However, a main mission of the
IAEA, ever since it was established by the UN in 1957 has been to promote nuclear
power. It has dramatically minimized the consequences of the catastrophic
accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima and routinely understated all problems
with atomic technology.
The “Nuclear Security Summit,”
with the IAEA playing a central role, is part of a series of gatherings
following a speech made by President Barack Obama in Prague in 2009 in which he
said “I am announcing a new international effort to secure all
vulnerable nuclear material around the world.”
In a press release this past
August, White House
spokesman Josh Earnest said this week’s meeting “will continue
discussion on the evolving [nuclear terrorism] threat and highlight steps
that can be taken together to minimize the use of highly-enriched uranium,
secure vulnerable materials, counter nuclear smuggling and deter, detect, and
disrupt attempts at nuclear terrorism.”
And, like the IAEA—formed as a
result of a speech by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower promoting “Atoms for
Peace” at the UN—officials involved with nuclear power in the U.S. government
and the nation’s nuclear industry have long pushed atomic energy and
downplayed problems about nuclear power and terrorism.
As the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS) says in its “Nuclear Security” statement, “The adequacy of a
security system depends on what we think we are protecting against. If we
have underestimated the threat, we may overestimate our readiness to meet it.
The NRC [U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission] has sometimes used
unrealistically modest assumptions about potential attackers. The design
basis threat (DBT) is the official definition of the security threats power
plant management is required to protect against….After 9/11, UCS criticized
the DBT for nuclear plants on these grounds, among others.”
UCS says the NRC “ignored the
possibility of air-and water-based attacks…it did not address the possibility
of large attacking groups using multiple entry points, or of an attack
involving multiple insiders…it concentrated on threats to the reactor core,
failing to address the vulnerability of spent fuel storage facilities.” Since
2011, says the UCS, the NRC “finally revised its rules to address the threat
of aircraft attack for new reactor designs—but at the same time has rejected
proposed design changes to protect against water- and land-based attacks.”
There is “also concern about the
testing standard used,” notes UCS. “In July 2012, the NRC adopted the new
process. However, as a result of industry pressure, the standards were
watered down.”
Further, says UCS, testing is
“currently required only for operating reactors, leaving questions about the
adequacy of protection against attacks on reactors that have shut down, but
still contain radioactive materials that could harm the public if damaged.”
A pioneer in addressing how
nuclear power plants are pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction has been
Dr. Bennett Ramberg. As he wrote in his 1980 landmark book, Nuclear Power
Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, despite the “multiplication
of nuclear power plants, little public consideration has been given to their
vulnerability in time of war.”
As he writes in a recent piece in
Foreign Affairs, “Nuclear Power
to the People: The Middle East’s New Gold Rush,” spotlighting
the push now by many nations in the Middle East to build nuclear power
plants, “Whatever the energy promise of the peaceful atom, evidently lost in
the boom are the security risks inherent in setting up reactors in the Middle
East—and not just the commonly voiced fear that reactors are harbingers of
weapons. The real risk is the possibility that the plants themselves will
become targets or hostages of nihilist Middle East militants, which could
result in Chernobyl and Fukushima-like meltdowns.”
“Given the mayhem that Islamic
State (also called ISIS) and kindred groups have sown in the region and their
end-of-days philosophy, the plausibility of an attempted attack on an
operating nuclear power plant cannot be denied,” writes Ramberg.
In fact, the plausibility of an
attempted attack cannot be denied in the Middle East—or anywhere in world.
Says Ramberg: “If terrorists did
strike a nuclear power plant in the Middle East, the nuclear fallout would
depend on the integrity of reactors’ own containment systems and the ability
of emergency personnel to suppress the emissions, a difficult challenge for
even the most advanced countries, as Japan found in Fukushima. Ongoing terrorism,
civil strife, or war at the time the reactor is compromised would only
complicate matters.”
Moreover, he notes, “all nations
in the Middle East share an increasingly practical alternative—solar energy.”
Nations around the world,
likewise, would be able to get along fine with solar, wind and differing
mixes of other safe, clean, renewable energy—not susceptible to terrorist
attack.
All 438 nuclear power plants
around the world today could—and should—close now. The insignificant amount
of electricity they generate—but 10 percent of total electric use—can be
provided by other sources.
And green energy makes for a less
costly power and a far safer world in comparison to catastrophic-danger prone
and unnecessary nuclear power. We must welcome energy we can live with and
reject power that presents a deadly threat in so many ways.
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