The Dirty Bomb in Our Backyard
Introduction
Every nuclear reactor represents a security threat since each contains a large inventory of radioactive materials that could be released to the environment. In today’s political climate, the threat of deliberate attack to create mass casualties and widespread economic dislocation must be added to the list of known dangers of nuclear-generated electricity.
Thirty-two of this country’s 104 reactors are especially vulnerable to air attack because their General Electric Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) design includes irradiated fuel pools containing hundreds of tons of high level nuclear waste, situated outside of the steel and concrete containment structure on the upper story of the reactor building.
A typical BWR has more than 400 metric tons of extremely hot radioactive fuel submerged in its elevated storage pool. Should the storage pool be drained of its cooling water the nuclear waste would overheat and catch fire releasing catastrophic amounts of radioactivity outside containment into the environment. For comparison, the reactor core in a typical BWR contains about 100 metric tons of fuel.
These reactors, along with the remaining 72 operating U.S. reactors and all pre-certified new designs, have been exempted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from demonstrating a capacity to withstand aircraft attack and penetration. This comes despite the fact that an NRC technical document states there are no significant structures that would prevent the penetration of the irradiated fuel storage pool from three sides by aircraft or high explosive projectiles.
Consequently, each of the 32 Boiling Water reactors represents a potential dirty bomb in our backyard, capable of releasing enough radiation, if successfully attacked, to cause tens of thousands of cancer deaths and render vast areas uninhabitable for centuries. In addition, there would likely be hundreds of billions of dollars in property and economic damages.
In addition, in 2006 the National Academy of Sciences delivered to Congress a publicly redacted version of its report “Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Fuel Storage,” identifying the BWRs as the most urgently in need of better protective security measures. However, the NRC, industry and Congress have failed to take effective action.
Despite assertions to the contrary, security at U.S. reactors has been only minimally upgraded since the attacks of 9/11. Government-evaluated mock terrorist exercises at nuclear power plants formerly involved three external attackers and one passive insider. The results of these tests revealed that close to 50% of the time the mock attackers were successful and could have destroyed enough equipment to cause “an American Chernobyl.”
It must also be noted that none of the pre-9/11 mock attacks featured the irradiated fuel pool as a target – each targeted the more robustly defended reactor core. Although never tested, it can be reasonably assumed that the less well defended fuel pool is equally, or perhaps even more, vulnerable to ground assault. Post-9/11 tests do include the irradiated fuel pools as targets, but none of the test results are now made public.
Since 9/11, upgrades and test results have been kept secret but a TIME magazine cover story in June 2005 (Are These Towers Safe?) revealed that the mock attack team has been increased to “less than double the old figure”; far fewer than the 19 men coordinated in four teams who were successfully deployed on 9/11. (A further security scandal was uncovered when Wackenhut was awarded the contract to conduct the mock tests while at the same time supplying the guard force at close to 50% of the country’s nuclear power facilities. That number has since been reduced to 19 plant sites as the result of guards caught sleeping in the “ready room.”)
Furthermore, provisions to defend reactors from waterborne attacks, for example by placing floating barriers at cooling water intake systems, have by and large not been implemented. Indeed, as TIME reported, “whereas the U.S. has spent $20 billion improving aviation security since 9/11, it has spent $1 billion enhancing nuclear-plant security.”
Beyond Nuclear’s campaign – The Dirty Bomb in our Backyard – will serve to highlight these dangers, educate the public, media and elected officials, and campaign vigorously to hold operators of the most vulnerable reactors and their regulator, the NRC, accountable to actions that would significantly reduce the threat posed by the vulnerability of these reactors. Should the NRC and nuclear operators fail to comply, the 32 Boiling Water Reactors should be promptly closed down.
