Aftermath of a successful terrorist attack on a US nuclear power plant?

I read an old article in Time Magazine in which a study was referenced that concluded that an attack on Indian Point (a nuclear plant in New York) would result in almost 50,000 deaths shortly afterwards in addition to hundreds of thousands of more deaths over time related to cancer. I've found other studies and statements by experts that say a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant would make 9/11 pale in comparison in terms of deaths and economic cost if successful.

My question is whether or not the idea of thousands dying as a result of terrorists causing a nuclear meltdown and releasing massive amounts of radiation into the surrounding area is plausible.

How large of an area would the radiation contaminate and how difficult would the clean up be?

This is of course assuming the terrorists actually make it inside the plant and have eliminated any opposition preventing them from accomplishing their mission.
 

Archibald

Banned
Well, in 1982 French terrorist group "Action Directe" fired a RPG-7 against the Superphenix nuclear power plant.
 
It should be obvious that the only possible answer is: it depends.

Not all nuclear plants are created equal, for starters; the fallout and dispersed radiations would hugely depend on the weather; the worst-case scenario, I suppose, is one in which no attempt whatsoever is or can be made to keep containment, but that is a very unlikely scenario. And so on.
 
Umm... I think the best answer to the Time article is to look at what actually happened at Chernobyl. The radiation release was vastly worse than anything any terrorist could ever manage (well, unless they got a job in the control room of an RBMK reactor - fitting the explosives to cause that much of a release to a modern PWR would take months of effort and a lot of really obvious heavy machinery), and the fatalities were orders of magnitude lower than are being suggested. Realistically the most any terrorist group could manage would be a small release of radiation, leading to mass panic and a few deaths from panic plus none from radiation exposure.
 

GarethC

Donor
Broadly speaking, if the terrorists are armed with... (quick Googling) eight F-16s each carrying a pair of 2000lb Mk84s, then yes, expect a fair old whack of nuclear material to get spread around, although OPs Time magazine is more in line with "detonating Little Boy" than "sabotaging a power plant"

Eight guys with assault rifles, grenades, a couple of LAWs, and some Semtex are not going to contaminate more than the parking lot.
 
Eight guys with assault rifles, grenades, a couple of LAWs, and some Semtex are not going to contaminate more than the parking lot.

Not even the parking lot, unless it's with their dead bodies.

To breach the security of a nuclear power station terrorists would need a number of things:

A) Enough men to breach the defences of the power station (which will be pretty formidable) and hold it for a long time

B) Heavy weapons and explosives

C) Inside information, or at the very least a lot of knowledge of the workings of a nuclear power station

Said terrorists also have to make sure that the authorities don't detect the preparations for the attack. The larger the terrorist group the less likely it is that the plot will go undetected. As @pdf27 points out the attackers would need a long time. By that time the authorities will have stormed the facility and killed them all. So I'd say a ground assault is implausible.

Crashing a fully loaded 747 into the plant might have more of a chance, although I do know that UK power stations were built with something like this in mind. However again that needs the terrorists to get past airport security, take over a plane and fly it well enough to hit the power station. Post 9/11 that's fairly unlikely and a hijacked airliner is likely to be shot down before it is able to crash into the power station.
 
Crashing a fully loaded 747 into the plant might have more of a chance, although I do know that UK power stations were built with something like this in mind. However again that needs the terrorists to get past airport security, take over a plane and fly it well enough to hit the power station. Post 9/11 that's fairly unlikely and a hijacked airliner is likely to be shot down before it is able to crash into the power station.
One thing that needs to be remembered here is that most western reactors are of the PWR type. That means the critical part to breach for a major release of radioactivity is both really rather small and heavily armoured (several inches of high-strength steel forgings). Breaching the concrete secondary containment vessel is possible if difficult with a large commercial aircraft - breaching the primary containment is very much harder since you've essentially got to get a direct hit with an engine core to make a hole in it.
 
Indeed. All such an attack is going to do is to destroy the aircraft. I have been told that the AGR station at Torness was designed to withstand being hit by an airliner.
 
I agree but assuming if the terrorists actually successfully made it inside the plant and had free reign/knowledge of how a plant works (however implausible that may be), what's the most amount of damage they could do if they caused a meltdown?

Also @CalBear what is your opinion on what the aftermath of a successful terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant would look like and the subsequent death toll (disregarding the implausibility of it being pulled off successfully)?
 
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I agree but assuming if the terrorists actually successfully made it inside the plant and had free reign/knowledge of how a plant works (however implausible that may be), what's the most amount of damage they could do if they caused a meltdown?
Umm... causing a meltdown isn't as simple as just pressing a few buttons. There are multiple redundant safety circuits involved, many of which will have to be disabled by pulling out relay cards and tampering with them. Figure they've got at most an hour before they're fighting what will essentially be an infantry action against vastly larger and better trained forces - that won't be enough to do the sort of work required.

...what is your opinion on what the aftermath of a successful terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant would look like and the subsequent death toll (disregarding the implausibility of it being pulled off successfully)?
Worst case is probably Fukushima (one or two dead on site, no casualties from radiation offsite but a thousand or so killed by being evacuated, mostly the very old), more likely Three Mile Island (no casualties).
 
Umm... causing a meltdown isn't as simple as just pressing a few buttons. There are multiple redundant safety circuits involved, many of which will have to be disabled by pulling out relay cards and tampering with them. Figure they've got at most an hour before they're fighting what will essentially be an infantry action against vastly larger and better trained forces - that won't be enough to do the sort of work required.

OK...

Worst case is probably Fukushima (one or two dead on site, no casualties from radiation offsite but a thousand or so killed by being evacuated, mostly the very old), more likely Three Mile Island (no casualties).

More would die on site, just not because of radiations. They'd die of small-arms fire and conventional explosives brought in by the terrorists.
Less would die while being evacuated; in the Fukushima case, things were terrible because of the earthquake and tsunami, which affected the conditions of the evacuation directly. In this case, there are no concomitant problems.
If the terrorists achieve some limited degree of success as to contamination, you might have an increase in cancer cases and deaths down the line, probably only among the plant personnel and first respondents, possibly among the local population. But it's a big if.
 
More would die on site, just not because of radiations. They'd die of small-arms fire and conventional explosives brought in by the terrorists.
I'm treating those as a separate case - they could do the same at any shopping centre, and nuclear power plants tend to have fewer small children and more heavy concrete walls, so casualties would probably be slightly lower.

Less would die while being evacuated; in the Fukushima case, things were terrible because of the earthquake and tsunami, which affected the conditions of the evacuation directly. In this case, there are no concomitant problems.
No, not at all. What kills vulnerable people isn't the evacuation process, it's the aftermath when they have to settle in to a new life away from everything and usually everyone they know. It's a similar case to when an elderly husband and wife die within a few days of one another "of a broken heart" - at that stage in life any major traumatic event (and being told you must leave your home where you've lived for decades because it's too dangerous to stay is going to be deeply traumatic) will kill a proportion of those affected.

If the terrorists achieve some limited degree of success as to contamination, you might have an increase in cancer cases and deaths down the line, probably only among the plant personnel and first respondents, possibly among the local population. But it's a big if.
A very big one. The real problem here is that we have two data points for the cancer risk of radiation doses - Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and only for people exposed to brief, very high doses of radiation (there is also some limited and rather weak data for uranium miners and the Chernobyl liquidators).
For radiation protection purposes we therefore assume that there are no additional cancer cases resulting from a zero radiation dose, and draw a straight line on the graph between the two. We're pretty sure that this interpretation is wrong - areas with high background radiation or professions like airline pilots who get high cosmic ray doses don't show the increased cancer rates you would expect - and there is a strong suspicion that the body is well equipped to deal with low-level damage from ionising radiation and only experiences problems from high doses which overwhelm the natural repair systems (there is even a theory - radiation hormesis - which states that low dose radiation is beneficial in activating the body's natural repair systems to reduce the cancer rate: I suspect it's nonsense but there is no evidence against it). This means that if they manage to vent some liquid/gaseous waste - the most likely successful attack vector - then they'll give a large number of people a very low dose due to dilution: exactly the sort of dose rate in fact which we don't believe will have any impact.
 
As for aircraft vs reactors, wasn't that the point of this test? Predictably the comments are swarmed with 9/11 truther idiots. . .

 
It requires an almost infinite amount of chance for anything remotely close to Chernobyl or Fukushima from happening, even if you do everything to turn the odds in your favor.

It goes to show just how unlucky humanity was.
 
I'm treating those as a separate case - they could do the same at any shopping centre, and nuclear power plants tend to have fewer small children and more heavy concrete walls, so casualties would probably be slightly lower.

OK.

No, not at all. What kills vulnerable people isn't the evacuation process, it's the aftermath when they have to settle in to a new life away from everything and usually everyone they know. It's a similar case to when an elderly husband and wife die within a few days of one another "of a broken heart" - at that stage in life any major traumatic event (and being told you must leave your home where you've lived for decades because it's too dangerous to stay is going to be deeply traumatic) will kill a proportion of those affected.

I'm not talking about that phenomenon at all. In the Fukushima evacuation, you had elderly/already ailing citizens die of hypothermia, dehydration and the worsening of existing medical conditions. That's very physical, not psychological or psychosomatic, and it was in large part due to the fact that the evacuation process was less than optimal and that the supporting facilities were worse than those the patients came from, and all of that was due to the earthquake, not the irradiation.

This means that if they manage to vent some liquid/gaseous waste - the most likely successful attack vector - then they'll give a large number of people a very low dose due to dilution: exactly the sort of dose rate in fact which we don't believe will have any impact.

You clearly are better informed than me here, so I'll gladly take your word for that.
 
On Nuclear reactor it's depends how you sabotage them, if they ram aircraft or fire rocket on it, making not much damage
now if they play with controls or tamper with reactor core cooling, it's Chernobyl or Fukushima and than you can evacuate Millions.
Current study on Belgium nuclear Reactor block 1 & 2 of Tihange accident (There 47 and 41 year old reactors ready for the scrap heap)
Give horror scenario that 27 million people in europe have to evacuated in range of 120 km. (that include entire population of Belgium, Netherland, Luxembourg)

Belgium Nuclear Reactors and Terrorattacks.
in 2014 the Reactor block 4 of Doel was sabotage in turbine complex and reactor made emergency shutdown.
Oddly in same time the kingdom Main electric power transformation station in Namur burn down, by incendiary.
and a water protection area (for drink water) in Limburg, was poisoned with deathly pesticide. (official claim: illegal waste dump)

After terror attack of Brussels march 22, 2016 gave very disturbing evidence that were no sabotage, but maybe terror attacks.
The Belgium police found in terrorist home data with 64 hour of video surveillance on home of Director of the Belgian Nuclear Programme !
Looking true the workers list on Doel block 4 gave shocking discovery: two workers left after 2014, there job and join IS in Syria.
(oddly right after sabotage of turbine complex and incendiary in Namur that disrupted power grid of Belgium.)
Next to that a security guard at the Tihange Nuclear power plant was found murder in his home and security-pass stolen on march 20, 2016 !

Of course the Belgium government denies all this and claim this is merely coincidence, (the Belgians tell me, They always lies...)
In same time increase the security by putting military patrols at overage cripple Nuclear power plans, who according to plan have to run until year 2025...

Source in english
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doel_Nuclear_Power_Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ty-pass-stolen-two-days-Brussels-attacks.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...er-station-surveillance-footage-a6949821.html
 
As for aircraft vs reactors, wasn't that the point of this test? Predictably the comments are swarmed with 9/11 truther idiots. . .


Ninajed...

This comment made my day:
"I would have thought the plane's nose would have gone completely through the concrete block"... wth does he thinkg the nose was made of? Unobtainium?!

Like others here, I think an attack from outside has few chances of sucess, unless it's a small army. And, if they take too long, I'd be willing to bet the folks inside can lock up the computer systems. Best bet would be to have 2-3 guys on the inside, working in the control room.
 
now if they play with controls or tamper with reactor core cooling, it's Chernobyl or Fukushima...

Save for the small detail that Chernobyl was graphite moderated and neither Fukushima nor Tihange have that vulnerability, and the other small detail that Tihange's containment capability is twice as redundant as Fukushima. This goes back to my first post: not all nuclear plants are equally vulnerable.
 
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