Originally posted by Flysoup:
I can not say what someone could to to bring down the nuke plant. I will not. That would be dumb. Would it disrupt the country. OK one person out of 200 is all it would take.
Allen Crise
Glen Rose, TX
I can tell you that anything short of a massive raid by Israeli F-16s won't do squat to those two containment buildings.
Comanche Peak was under construction back in the early 80s when I was an engineering student at McLennan Community College in Waco. (Reactor 1 didn't come online till 91, and reactor 2 didn't come online till 93, and was the next to last reactor to go online in the US.) What was then Texas Power & Light provided every engineer major at MCC with a tour of the site, they even picked us up in a
very nice bus at took us there and back.
I've seen with my on eyes the thickness of the walls, and the
extraordinary robust construction of the the high strength steel rebar web that the concrete covers.
Our 'tour guide' stated that " the containment buildings could withstand a fully loaded 747 crashing into it while traveling at terminal velocity, while the building was being hit by both a hurricane and an earthquake."
Being a wise-n-himer I ask if it was designed to handle an attack by Israeli F-16s. Silence.
My engineering instructor was amused by my wise-crack. If you will recall in June of 1981 Sadam had his nuclear program taken out by a very bold and brilliant Israeli air strike, where the plane that 'hit' Sadam's nuclear facilities were F-16As that drop special bombs that were designed to penetrate the containment buildings. Building that I might add were of French design and construction, and which did not measure up to NRC specs.
In a further odd turn of events shortly after the tour a couple of test pilots from General Dynamics flew in an F-16A to the old James Connally Air Field at Texas State Technical Institute. My Dad was the Chairman of the Aviation Maintenance Program at TSTI, and my parents and I live in the old officers housing area of the TSTI campus. I hand the opportunity to talk to the two GD test pilots, along with several of my friend and many TSTI students. The test pilots had some info from their friend that were still in the US Navy. Had the Israeli air strike not gone
exactly as planned the Iraqi containment building would not have been breached.
I am personally, and
professionally convinced that there is very little likelihood of a terrorist attack succeeding at a nuclear facility, at least in terms of breaching the containment building.
The only possible way of having an attack succeed on such an installation is to clog the intake for the cooling water in order to get the 'pile' to overheat and meltdown. That said, such a tactic is doubtful as any tampering with intake flow would result in an immediately SCRAM of the reactors.
The best that a direct attack on the plant could do, in all likelihood, is to cause inconvenience, and expense. The truth is that terrorist are looking for targets that are under the radar of national defense establishment, and law enforcement. Furthermore, they are looking to terrorize to the maximum extent possible. That means running up the causality score. Which in turn means striking at a local that gives them (the terrorist) the most bang for the buck, effort, etc.. Which in turn again means striking at a target with a high population density, and/or a high profile for maximum shock value.
Nuclear containment buildings are a non-starter. There is simply too much risk of a botched op, or of a flat out failed op. To botch, or utterly fail such an op would heavily undermine the goal/s of the terrorist by making them look impotent.
There are very many other nuclear power generation facilities that have re-opend their cooling lakes to the public. TXU is just being intransigent. Mainly because they're a charlie-sierra outfit.
TFP
