-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [biofuel] Global atomic agency confesses little can
be done to safeguardnuclear plants
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 22:07:31 +0900
From: Keith Addison
To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/09/09192001/ap_45005.asp
- 9/19/2001 - ENN.com
Global atomic agency confesses little can be done to
safeguard nuclear plants
Wednesday, September 19, 2001
By William J. Kole, Associated Press
VIENNA, Austria - Security is being tightened at the world's
nuclear
power plants, an international watchdog agency said Monday,
but it
conceded that little can be done to shield a nuclear
facility from a
direct hit by an airliner.
Most nuclear power plants were built during the 1960s and
1970s, and
like the World Trade Center, they were designed to withstand
only
accidental impacts from the smaller aircraft widely used at
the time,
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said as it
opened its
annual conference. "If you postulate the risk of a jumbo jet
full of
fuel, it is clear that their design was not conceived to
withstand
such an impact," spokesman David Kyd said.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was among delegates
from 132
nations who opened the conference with calls to better
safeguard
nuclear plants and to keep nuclear materials out of
terrorists' hands.
Abraham brought a message from President George W. Bush to
the
Vienna-based IAEA, urging the agency to keep pace with "the
real and
growing threat of nuclear proliferation." The world "must
ensure that
nuclear materials are never used as weapons of terror,"
Abraham said.
"We cannot assume that tomorrow's terrorist acts will mirror
those
we've just experienced."
In the wake of last week's attacks in New York and
Washington,
governments have tightened security outside nuclear power
and
radioactive waste facilities worldwide.
But Japan, which is heavily dependent on nuclear energy and
has 52
nuclear plants, warned Monday that although tighter security
is
needed, nothing can shield the plants from attacks by
missiles or
aircraft.
Conference delegates, who began Monday with a minute of
silence and a
song from the Vienna Boy's Choir in memory of the victims of
the U.S.
attacks, met behind closed doors Monday and Tuesday on ways
to
improve plant security.
In the West, nuclear power plants were designed more with
ground
vehicle attacks in mind, Kyd said. Although many were
designed to
withstand a glancing blow from a small commercial jetliner,
a direct
hit at high speed by a modern jumbo jet "could create a
Chernobyl
situation," said an American official who declined to be
identified.
However, the buildings that house nuclear reactors
themselves are far
smaller targets than the Pentagon posed, and it would be
extremely
difficult for a terrorist to mount a direct hit at an angle
that
could unleash a catastrophic chain of events, Kyd said.
If a nuclear power plant were hit by an airliner, the
reactor would
not explode, but such a strike could destroy the plant's
cooling
systems. That could cause the nuclear fuel rods to overheat
and
produce a steam explosion that could release lethal
radioactivity
into the atmosphere.
The IAEA said it would work more closely with Interpol and
other
police agencies to minimize the risk of nuclear materials
falling
into terrorists' hands. Over the past 12 months, there have
been 13
known interceptions of trafficked nuclear material
worldwide, the
agency said.
Officials said it takes at least eight kilograms (17 1/2
pounds) of
plutonium or 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of enriched uranium to
produce
a single nuclear weapon, but that only miniscule amounts of
those
metals are known to have been smuggled in recent years.
"A nuclear weapon requires tremendous expertise. We have no
indications that any terrorist group is that advanced," Kyd said.
Although nuclear waste potentially could be used to produce
a
"radiological" weapon, it would take months or years to
kill, and it
is far cheaper to obtain compounds that could be used to
create
lethal chemical weapons, he said.
Copyright 2001, Associated Press
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