|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Threat Assessment: Nuclear Plants Can Survive Jetliner Crash, Study Says By Mike Nartker The study, conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute on NEI’s request, found that nuclear plant structures could withstand a direct hit by an airliner with only minor damage. Such an attack would not breach the structures examined — reactor containment structures, spent fuel storage pools, dry spent fuel storage facilities and spent fuel transportation containers — and would not release radioactive materials into the environment, according to the study. “The results of this study validate the industry’s confidence that nuclear power plants are robust and protect the fuel from impacts of a large commercial aircraft,” Joe Colvin, NEI president and chief executive officer, said in a press release. “Clearly an impact of this magnitude would do great damage to a plant’s ability to generate electricity. But the findings show, far more importantly, that public health and safety would be protected,” he added. The study’s analyses were based on a simulated crash of a Boeing 767 into the various nuclear power plant structures at a speed of 350 miles per hour — the speed at which a hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the NEI release. The Boeing 767 is the most widely used “wide body” aircraft in U.S. skies, the study says. While the airliner has the ability to hit plant structures at higher speeds than 350 miles per hour, pilots have said that ground-level precision flying at greater speeds is more difficult and lesser-experienced pilots would have difficulty controlling the aircraft, according to the study. Anti-nuclear activists have criticized the study for being designed to confirm conclusions predetermined by the nuclear industry (see GSN, Sept. 23). Edwin Lyman, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, said that while the study was released this month, NEI began circulating a set of talking points regarding the study’s conclusions in August. “They knew the answers they wanted and worked backwards,” Lyman was quoted by the Washington Post last week as saying. “We can’t take anything the industry says at face value,” he added. The industry talking points on the study noted that terrorists could use a hijacked airliner to destroy a nuclear power plant’s auxiliary buildings, Lyman said. That information, however, was not included in the released version, he said. Such an attack, when combined with the loss of power to a nuclear plant caused by outside terrorists, could result in a meltdown, Lyman said. Lyman also criticized the study for failing to consider potential worst-case scenarios. For example, the jet speed and containment wall thickness examined were not conservative enough, he said, noting that a 767 is capable of higher speeds. The effects of an airliner fuel explosion and the resultant fire were also not considered, Lyman said, charging the nuclear industry with using “tunnel vision” to limit the scenarios that were examined in the study. Lyman said he was concerned that the newly created Homeland Security Department will not have the ability to independently assess nuclear power plant security information. Instead, the new department will rely on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which Lyman said is “a captive of the [nuclear] industry right now.”
| ||||||||||
Back to top
