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

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.
I wasn't even allowing for that - the death rate among evacuees is still raised even now. We know that even a perfectly run evacuation, pre-planned under optimal circumstances will kill people. The judgement is in deciding when the risks of staying exceed those of going. If you've got a hurricane coming in and your house will be under 20ft of water, that's a good reason to go. A tiny dose of ionising radiation is not.

You clearly are better informed than me here, so I'll gladly take your word for that.
In my last job I was a classified radiation & beryllium worker, and was responsible for writing the risk assessments, method statements, etc. for people working in contaminated areas and getting Health Physics to sign them off. The underlying impacts are something I understand pretty well, although I'm an engineer and not a health physicist.
 
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...
In other words, there was a terrorist attack on an allegedly vulnerable nuclear plant and the effects were so small that it took them ages to work out what happened... Not exactly a demonstration of a high-risk system!
 
In other words, there was a terrorist attack on an allegedly vulnerable nuclear plant and the effects were so small that it took them ages to work out what happened... Not exactly a demonstration of a high-risk system!

Let say this way, Belgium and Europe escape a extinction event, do Stupidity of terrorist.

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.

Now that's the other more Dangerous problem we face in Europe: Stupidity of Belgium Politicians with nuclear reactors
see the Belgium Nuclear Power plants are BEYOND there Life time and had to be closed down in 2015 (Parlament ruling in 2000)
But Belgium Politicians goofed up massive, they had 15 years time to build replacement power plants and renewable energy until 2015
IT HAPPEN NOTHING, either budget problems, the struggle between Flemish and Walloons were more important as replacement power plants.
Special hypocrite were the Environmentalism (Greens) in Belgium, the Parliamentarians Greens fight for shutdown of Nuclear power plants, while the Regionals Green fight against...renewable energy.
Yes you read right local Greens fight against solar cells, wind turbines, Gas turbine plants, high voltage power lines to Germany ( and also against Vaccination).

For the Moment the closed down is delay to 2025
sadly two reactors blocks in Belgium are ready for the scrap heap (Tihange 2 and Doel 3)
At Tihange the external reactor hulls is made from low quality Concrete and will fail in Harrisburg type disaster
and Tihange 2 and Doel 3 have thousands of semi laminar flaws in the reactor vessel's steel !
at Tihange 2 the situation is so serious that cooling water must be HEATED up to +50°C to prevent rupture
in case of emergencies they need to pump cold river water into system, the reactor vessel will Rupture !
To make matter worst Belgium reactors run on MOX fuel a mixture of uranium and plutonium

Who need Terrorist, if you elected politicians are incapable morons...

Source in english
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doel_Nuclear_Power_Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station

that Tihange reactor block after repairs work on concrete hull, filling up the cracks and corrosions...
huy-belgium-overlooking-the-tihange-nuclear-power-station-G31GCA.jpg
 
Back in the '80's, perhaps the 90's, nuclear plants had private security firms armed with revolvers. It would be easier, in that pre 9/11 era, to take the plant, especially if you had one or more people on the inside. What could you do once you'd taken the plant? I don't know. But, if you had control of the plant, and someone who knew hat they were doing, you suddenly have massive panic and chaos. With a threat to blow up the plant, how long until SWAT is moving? How long until federal forces get the go-ahead to act? The threat to blow up the plant, realistic or not, would create widespread panic.

It would be very easy, at least at some plants, to have your second wave close at hand when things started to happen. For example, at Seabrook Station, in New Hampshire, there was an information center not far from the reactor. Anyone could drive right in without a search. So, you could have a minivan or two either in, or en route, when the balloon went up--plenty of gear and terrorists inside.

These days, things are different. Much harder to take the plants, I hope.
 
John Dusk wrote:
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.

Depends on the 'study' (of which there were a lot of junk ones directly post 9/11 btw which are still used to based even worse "studies" on today :) ) but sounds like a "very worst case" where they actually get control of not only the reactor vessel but the control stations too. Pretty much the whole complex which isn't very viable considering the amount of 'manpower' required.

Actually getting a meltdown is possible but getting it to breach the containment is tough. Actually in most US plants breaching the containment will shut down the reactor, (which is why the 'crash an airplane into one' scenario doesn't work from the get go) as the ancillary systems are located there for that specific reason. As TMI showed, (by it not happening despite everything going about as wrong as it possibly could) a meltdown can't actually go "China Syndrome" as by the time the core breaches the reactor vessel it's already stopped reacting and is running on residual heat alone which the floor is designed to more than handle. Fukushima showed what happens when you get another worst case with a western reactor design whereas Chernobyl was about the worst DESIGN possible to have a failure with but is far too often used to "show" how bad things could get.

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.

"Plausible" depending on how many assumptions you want to toss into the mix to make a scenario :) The main problem with the premises of 'terrorists' tends to make the required assumptions rapidly build into the "implausible"

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

Well... "Assuming" a well-planned, supported and run suicide (they are NOT getting out because most of the needed work will ensure those doing the job die) operation the "potential" is rather huge. I put that in quotes because while it IS rather huge the actual plausibility of carrying out the operation at any level rapidly decreases as the potential size of the effect increases. See US power plants have some specific vulnerabilities that have become 'built in' due to regulatory and other interference but actually utilizing those vulnerabilities increases the difficulty of accomplishing the task.

Frankly there are a number of methods to spreading contamination around which can be employed once you manage to breach the containment AND from on-site materials that a large operation could exploit.

I'll note though on a smaller scale the REAL damage is simply having it known that "terrorist" are in control of a nuclear power plant and spreading panic and fear rather than actually causing damage.

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

Ahem, well you see that's one of the reasons why such an attack is considered rather 'implausible' in and of itself. They CAN NOT 'eliminate' the opposition as the on-site opposition is only the tip of ice berg here. There would be an immediate and rapid response from local and state agencies up to an including sustained direct assault on the station. (Time in this case is very much of essence and no "negotiation' phase beyond "give up now or die" would be included) As has been pointed out if the terrorist don't have someone familiar with and capable of, (several someone's really, about a half dozen techs realistically) keeping the plant running it will begin to shut down on its own. "Worse" from the terrorist perspective is the plant can be SCRAMed from the outside by proper application of external circumstances. (A few well-placed mortar or bombs to certain outside equipment will cause an auto-SCRAM) And worst-comes-to-worst a concentrated airstrike would drop the containment structure onto a 'hot' reactor burying it and containing any radiation release.

Airplanes into reactors: The main issue here is an assumption that a concrete building with windows and other openings equals a concrete structure specifically DESIGNED to withstand a pretty high overpressure from a nearby exploding nuclear bomb and collapse 'gracefully' are equivalent. (Nuclear power plants were assumed in the design phase to be located near if not targeted themselves with nuclear weapons.( And you don't want to ADD to the radiation problem and you DO want to allow that such a plant might be rebuilt after an attack) Hence an aircraft is going to at worst cause enough damage to have the reactor SCRAM but not enough to disable or interfere with positive control systems.

Changundramon:
how secure are american powerplants from an internal fire, or a power outage' This happened in an East German NP.[/quoet]

Pretty secure. They have numerous backups but as Fukushima clearly shows it's not impossible to have a failure of imagination lead to a serious situation. Of course MY favorite concept is the "Nuclear Power Island" which pretty much eliminates most of the issues but has the down-side of 'location' to deal with :)
https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/workshops/innovtech/presentations/documents/ii-2-golay.pdf

(And really I'd take the effort to make it LOOK like an island so no one complains about having their "view" ruined :) )

Randy
 
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