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Stardate 20011109.1537 (On Screen): Doug writes to me as follows:

On NPR the other day there was a discussion about the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to WTC-like attack. The response of the nuclear power industry representative was not reassuring. Nukes are designed to withstand a lot -- 12 feet of reinforced concrete and steel surround the container vessel -- but they are not invulnerable, and probably could not withstand the impact of a fully fueled jumbo jet. It seems to me that this type of attack is far more likely than the use of a real nuclear device.

The anti-nuke spokesman of course took this to mean that the nukes should all be shut down immediately. I wonder, though, why can't the FAA impose "no-fly" zones around nukes enforced by Army anti-aircraft units? Isn't this what the Army is for? Why is no one talking about this? Am I just being an alarmist?

Obviously I can't speak for the government. My opinion is that this is a case of activists hijacking (ahem) an issue to serve their own agenda, in this case opposition to nuclear power. But it isn't really an issue in my opinion. For instance, there has always been a no-fly zone around nuclear power plants; you can't fly over one unless you're above a certain altitude.

Use of surface anti-aircraft defenses would not be efficient; right now our defense against any future attacks such as the four on 9/11 is to scramble interceptors to accompany any suspicious flight, so that it can be shot down before reaching a critical target. Several such incidents have taken place already, such as the case where passengers subdued a guy who went crazy and tried to force his way into the cockpit of a jet headed towards Chicago. But the jet was also accompanied by two F-16's until it landed safely at O'Hare; had it diverted and seemed to be priming for an attack, they would have shot it down. That's better and more efficient than trying to base fixed defenses at specific locations.

That said, if someone does manage to take over another jet in the US and wants to use it for an attack, I'd much rather they attacked a nuclear power plant than that they attacked a city. These are not actually all that accurate of missiles; the reason they were able to hit what they did on 9/11 was because the targets were large. The containment building at a nuclear power plant is quite small and the likelihood is that they'd miss it. And even if they did hit it, and in the unlikely event that they broke it open, the actual result would be much less severe than anti-nuclear activists would like you to believe. As bad as it was, Chernobyl didn't kill as many people as the WTC attack did, and the result here would be far less severe than Chernobyl.

I suppose it bears repeating at this point that it is physically impossible for a nuclear power plant to detonate as if it were a nuclear bomb. The fuel contained within it is only enriched to a couple percent U-235 and isn't capable of an uncontrolled fission reaction building up to detonation. It's no more likely to explode than you are. The worst possible outcome would be a substantial scattering of radioactive fallout, but the only explosion would come from chemical energy.

But that would require that the containment building rupture, and even on a direct hit I'm not too concerned about breaking the containment enclosure open. Note that the crashes in NYC did not actually bring the buildings down: two buildings hit, two buildings still standing. It was the fires which caused the catastrophe; they weakened the remaining structural members of the buildings and began the collapse. For all its mass, a jet liner is actually quite flimsy; when it hits something it causes a pretty diffuse impact. There isn't any sharp kinetic blow; what there is is slow and spread over a very wide area. 12 feet of steel-reinforced concrete can stand up to quite a blow, and unlike the steel frame of the WTC towers it would be largely impervious to a major fire afterwards.

When the military wants to attack a reinforced bunker, it doesn't rely on high explosives because all that does is to make small craters in the concrete. They use things like the GBU-28. It's about 80% steel, and extremely good steel at that. It's long and thin and extremely strong, and it penetrates the concrete as a kinetic weapon -- and only detonates after penetration. Equally, when tanks fire on lesser concrete fortifications they don't use explosives and they sure as hell don't use incendiaries. A tank is far more likely to use a sabot round (which doesn't carry any explosives at all). The fact is that a commercial jet, considered as a weapon, is just about the worse design you could conceive of for penetration of steel reinforced concrete.

Nothing is indestructable, of course, but the point is that we are already adequately defending nuclear power plants, both by design and by practice, against the threat of attacks such as the ones launched on 9/11. (discussion in progress)