Skip to main content

Currently Skimming:

7 Threats to Civil Nuclear-energy Facilities
Pages 61-70

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 61...
... In addition, the "hard target" characteristics of most nuclear-energy facilities make them challenging to destroy from the outside with the types of weapons terrorists are most likely to have at their disposal, namely rocket launchers, mortars, light aircraft packed with explosives, and hijacked airliners used as cruise missiles. This presentation begins by locating the threat of attack on civil nuclear-energy facilities in the larger terrain of nuclear-terrorism dangers.
From page 62...
... dirty bombs, meaning conventional explosives or incendiary devices that disperse radioactive materials, (2) attacks on nuclear-weapon or nuclear-energy facilities, and (3)
From page 63...
... The motivation presumably resides above all in that an attack on nuclear facilities has the very considerable potential for doing damage. A successful attack on a nuclear power reactor, for example, could destroy the facility itself, worth hundreds of millions to billions of dollars; produce tens to hundreds or even thousands of early fatalities and tens of thousands of delayed cancer deaths; and severely contaminate hundreds to thousands of square miles of land, requiring removal of much of it from habitation, commerce, and agriculture for periods ranging from months to many decades.
From page 64...
... India has 14 power reactors at 6 sites, and 8 more reactors under construction. Worldwide there are 440 power reactors and 32 more under construction.35 Each reactor site has a spent-fuel storage pool containing typically several times as much long-lived radioactivity as a reactor.
From page 65...
... Unlike accidents, which occur at random, terrorists carefully choose the site of their attacks. Further, they might even succeed in choosing weather conditions that would maximize the impacts of an attack.42 The 1997 Brookhaven study estimated the consequences of a spent-fuel pool fire at a pressurized water reactor to be 54,000 to 143,000 extra cancer deaths; 2,000 to 7,000 square kilometers of agricultural land condemned; and economic costs of $117 to $556 billion from evacuation.
From page 66...
... Most of the security shortcomings that are identified in routine NRC inspections are classified as non-cited violations on the grounds "that the problems had no direct immediate adverse consequences at the time they were discovered." This appears to mean that no terrorists were attacking the plant while it was being inspected. This may seem to be a harsh judgment, but the 2003 GAO study reported that in 2000 and 2001, the NRC issued no cited violations and 72 non-cited ones.
From page 67...
... nuclear-reactor sites found that the NRC does not have a routine, centralized process for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating security inspections to identify problems that may be common to other plants or to identify lessons learned in resolving a security problem that may be helpful to plants in other regions. NRC headquarters receives inspection reports only when a licensee challenges the findings from security inspections.
From page 68...
... Here are some additional steps that ought to be considered: • ensure the appropriate dissemination of information between sites and headquarters, and among sites • expand the no-fly zones around high-risk facilities • provide additional physical barriers or active defenses to make it more difficult to fly an aircraft into a nuclear reactor or a spent fuel storage pool with the trajectory and the velocity required for a successful attack • build additional dry-cask spent-fuel storage capacity to reduce pool inventories • strengthen containment buildings • place future reactors, spent-fuel storage, and reprocessing plants underground • nationalize the guard forces at nuclear facilities in order to achieve standardized profiling and training, and upgraded weaponry • improve evacuation, medical assessment, treatment, and decontamination capabilities THE CASE FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION A successful terrorist attack on a nuclear facility anywhere would have consequences everywhere. This is true because large releases of radioactivity circle the globe.
From page 69...
... • facilitate learning from diverse experiences -- including negative ones -- and expertise available in different countries • reduce the cost and increase the pace of security improvements because expertise and technology are being shared • eliminate easy targets (which terrorists are able to seek out) by propagating best practices and raising the standard everywhere Clearly, international cooperation ought to be encouraged in general, but it is particularly crucial between the United States and India.


This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More information on Chapter Skim is available.