I contacted both my Senators and Representatives. I suggest everyone do the same. They must beef up security at these facilities of we'll have another Chernoble.

From the news: Russian intelligence warns CIA that more attacks imminent - internet publication BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 12, 2001

Text of report by Russian Ren TV on 12 September [Presenter Yelena Meshcheryakova] Russian intelligence agents know the organizers and executors of the terrorist attacks in the USA. They are Usamah Bin-Laden's organization, the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan and the Taleban [Afghan] government. According to the internet publication news.ru, Russia's foreign intelligence special envoy told the CIA that there were at least two Uzbeks among the suicide terrorists. Our security services are warning the USA that what happened on Tuesday is just the beginning, and that the next target of the terrorists will be an American nuclear facility. Source: Ren TV, Moscow, in Russian 0900 gmt 12 Sep 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to Copyright

-- Meg Davis (meg9999@aol.com), September 18, 2001

Answers

This is indeed credible. Modern HEAT weapons (High-Energy Anti Tank) are quite capable of blasting through reactor containment structures.

-- Barb Knox (barbara-knox@iname.com), September 18, 2001.

The containment vessel for a US nuclear power plant is several meters thick made of steel reinforced high strength concrete. I doubt any anti tank weapon could even make a dent, let alone penetrate. Also, so what if the containment vessel in breached. Under normal operating conditions there is NO free radioactivity in that area. The actual reactor is many meters below ground level and physically at the bottom of the building.

Other methods will be required, like and attack from the inside or a tactical nuclear device.

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), September 18, 2001.

All you have to do is target the cooling system, which runs all the way from the plant to the lake/river/ocean and back again. The reactor will then melt and explode. I'll bet there's more than a few designs that fail to protect against unexpected catastrophic cooling water loss.

-- Ken (n4wind@sonic.net), September 18, 2001.

Reactors do not explode!

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), September 18, 2001.

This will be more of a morale issue than anything else.

As said before, Reactors do not explode.
They are many feet thick, and will not be breached by a 747 hitting them. While it will be offline and many folks could be without power, folks should not be subjected to radiation.

-- (perry@ofuzzy1.com), September 18, 2001.

Tue, September 18, 2001 Powder keg U.S. nuclear power plants sitting ducks for terrorism

Increased airport security is of utmost importance in these days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And rightly so, since it was all too easy for groups of young men to hijack three airliners and turn them into bombs. But let's not kid ourselves. Many experts seem to agree that the next terrorist attack won't involve the same dynamics, weapons or kinds of targets. And it's already in the planning stages, if what American officials believe is true, and that is that Osama bin Laden is the man behind the Sept. 11 outrage.

http://www.trnonline.com/stories/09182001/editorial/27138.shtml

So, while focusing immediate attention on making it harder for terrorists to hijack jets, our national security forces also need to be thinking about how to prepare for the next assault and how to make that assault difficult if not impossible to accomplish. Where are we vulnerable both in terms of security and in terms of international politics? On both counts, it is our nuclear power industry that is most vulnerable. Today, we have more than 100 nuclear power plants in operation, and many of them are not secure enough. At least that's the contention of editors for U.S. News & World Report in a scathing three-page expose appearing in the issue scheduled to be on newsstands this week. Published following an investigation, the U.S. News report makes it clear that many power plants could be easy targets or actually have been easy targets. At some, security has been so lax that federal agents in mock runs had no trouble getting inside to do serious damage. At others, hiring practices have been so lax that known psychotics were put into sensitive positions where they could have wreaked their own kind of havoc. "Charles Manson could get access to a nuclear power plant," one former nuclear security officer told U.S. News. And at others spent fuel is stacked in cooling pools in relative insecurity.

While these security problems have been well documented, it is the intention of the nuclear power industry to have less security in the future, not more, according to the story. In fact, this week the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is scheduled to allow power plant operators to do their own security shakedown exercises, something done in the past by federal authorities as a kind of test. Ironically, the U.S. News investigative report is in an edition that came out right about the time terrorists were hitting New York and Washington, but now that it is out it has much more impact because we now know that anything is possible in the terrorist war on the United States.

In hitting the World Trade Center, the terrorists were interested in the symbolic effect as much as the loss of life. Likewise, the Pentagon was hit for what it symbolizes about our nation. The nuclear power industry, it can be argued, stands as a symbol of the wasteful American lifestyle that consumes so much of the world's resources for so few of its people. In addition, because we are the only nation in the history of the world to actually use nuclear weapons on civilian populations the plants symbolize our continuing reluctance to back off on development and use of a technology that has more potential for destruction than for anything else. How do others in the world see us and our use of this energy resource - that's the question.

Now is clearly no time to back off on securing these nuclear power plants. And, in fact, it would probably be worthwhile to review the security arrangements at the plants to see if they can't be beefed even more to protect those who operate them, and those who live around them and those who depend on them for electricity.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 19, 2001.

"Reactors do not explode". Sounds just like "one airplane cannot bring down a whole skyscraper".

-- Ken (n4wind@sonic.net), September 19, 2001.