Jet crashes at nuke reactors to be addressed tomorrow but not today

[ensho]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2009/1727


The ever-vigilant Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued milestone regulations requiring the builders of new nuke reactors to explain how their plants might withstand the crash of large commercial jetliners.

But the NRC has exempted the reactors that matter most---the 104 licensed to operate RIGHT NOW. As you read this, jets hitting any of them could kill untold thousands of us and render entire regions of our nation permanently uninhabitable.

But requiring current reactor owners to do what’s now expected of future ones would apparently be an unsupportable burden.

All reactors would shut immediately without federal limits to their owners’ liability for the incalculable death and destruction that could come from a stricken nuke.

The first jet to crash into the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 flew DIRECTLY over the one dead and two operating reactors at Indian Point, 45 miles up the Hudson, plus the three spent fuel pools there. Terrorists close to the attack---including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed---have confirmed that reactors were originally targeted, but they changed their minds "for the moment."

This is the NRC’s first significant public nod to ANY structural responsibility for such a catastrophe.

But the regulations say taxpayers must pay to prevent such attacks, not the industry. So far, not a single US reactor has any form of anti-aircraft protection, federal, state or otherwise, and many doubt they'd work anyway.

-snip-

At very least the new administration should demand that the new regulations for proposed new reactors must now be applied to the ones actually operating.

If it can’t be done, the nuke power industry should tell us why.
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agree