Nuke-plant weakness paper was open to public

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The government has known since at least 1982 that American nuclear power plants were susceptible to a jetliner crash, yet left a scientific report in a public reading room that identified the specific vulnerabilities of reactors.

The 119-page report was available for public inspection at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission well after the Sept. 11 hijackings, despite warnings dating to 1994 that terrorists wanted to strike a U.S. nuclear power plant.

The study, conducted in 1982 by the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory, identified the speeds that would be needed for a jetliner to pierce the concrete containment walls that protect a nuclear reactor.

It estimated that if just 1 percent of a jetliner’s fuel ignited after impact, it would create an explosion equivalent to 1,000 pounds of dynamite inside a reactor building already damaged by the impact. The report suggested that U.S. regulators underestimated the potential damage from such an explosion.

"It appears that fire and explosion hazards have been treated with much less care," the report said. It added: "The breaching of some of the plant’s concrete barriers may often be tantamount to a release of radioactivity."

An NRC spokesman said Wednesday the report was removed from the reading room earlier this month and that the agency also was scrubbing its Web site of any similarly sensitive documents that could aid terrorists.

NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said such precautions weren’t taken before Sept. 11 because "it was never considered credible that suicidal terrorists would hijack a large commercial airliner and deliberately crash it into a nuclear power plant."

The federal whistle-blower group that discovered the report filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking the NRC and Homeland Security director Tom Ridge to order immediate security improvements at nuclear power plants.

The National Whistleblower Center asked the NRC to deploy weapons at nuclear plants and post armed guards outside spent fuel storage areas, which it said have far less security than reactors but potentially could release lethal amounts of radiation.