Slashdot Mirror
What's Being Done About Nuclear Security
KrisCowboy writes "Wired.com has an interesting article about Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's speech about the defensive measures being taken at the Nuclear Energy warehouses. 'Atomic storehouses, vulnerable to terrorist attack, will be emptied of their radioactive loads,' he promises. Keeping in mind the recent Slashdot story about a
Hafnium bomb, more security measures are needed, and fast."
What are the other nuclear powers doing?
To the powers that be in: China; France; India; Israel; Pakistan; Russia; The United Kingdom; and the United States.
What else are you doing to prevent the unthinkable happening?
A serious question to which the rest of the world expects a serious answer.
All this stuff about 'securing our nuclear stockpiles' is so much hogwash. The stockpiles are pretty secure as it is, it would take more than just a few guys with guns to get to anything that's bomb grade. IN THE US. The really dangerous stockpiles are the ones that have little or no oversight at all or where oversight was only added after the horse already left the barn. Countries like, but not neccesarily limited to Pakistan, Iran, former USSR, India and so on are far more of a risk in this respect than the US. In Africa there are natural nuclear reactors where the 'yellowcake' can be dug up by a bunch of determined guys with shovels and a lack of desire to live. It wouldn't take a whole lot to pack a container full of this stuff, a timing mechanism and a bunch of diesel for a very large dirty bomb that can be set of by remote in a shipping yard or so. Not that it would kill a lot of people, but it could shut down a major harbour for a long long time. Of course the countries that are most likely to be at risk are also partners in the so called war on terrorism so we can't really offend them. And when that islamic coup happens in Pakistan (anybody have any odds on that ?) it will be *far* too late to get moving. Nuclear proliferation has gone way too far to put the genie back in the bottle unless there will be a genuine international effort to round up *ALL* the fissionable material (including that in the US) and to place it under international (UN) oversight. The current reasoning seems to be that only 'democratic' countries can have it, unless you manage to join the nuclear club in secret because then you become untouchable. And those are the real weapons of mass distruction we're talking about, not some imagined gas cannisters or non existant Iraqi bombs...
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Everybody should have one. Then we'd all be safe.
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No matter how much you do, some fraction of your vital infrastructure will always be vulnerable to a sufficiently powerful and well-organised attack. If you protected every critical piece of infrastructure in a country -- all the power stations, water supplies, transport routes, government hubs, etc. -- then you'd expend far more resources than are practical on security, and having so many people in the system would cause weak links anyway.
Ultimately, you can't prevent an unknown enemy from committing an unknown act forever. All you can do is your best to stop it (and that's better done starting from intelligence rather than raw defensive power at every vulnerable point) and your best to clean up the mess (e.g., by having back-up generators in key places like hospitals in case the power does go out).
A more serious question that I'd pose, given the above harsh-but-true assessment, is how much could quality of life in general be improved if all the resources being diverted in the name of "fighting terrorism" were invested in hospitals, schools, etc. in the first place.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Some time ago, post september 11th, the Nuclear Regulatory commission decreed that the security at nuclear power plants was not enough, and that it should be increased.
Ok, that's all well and fine, as much as I hate the nanny state, that's what they're there for, and we have to deal with it.
So, these security upgrades, required by the NRC if we are to continue generating nuclear power, where initially scheduled to be done by this coming october.
This was a reasonable timeframe at the initial order.
Except every month or two, they'd increase or change the theoretical attack our security would have to be able to repel.
And then never move the completion date back to allow time to make adjustments for their continual meddling.
So now, at my plant, we have a huge security capital project that needs to be done in 5 months, because the NRC just finished up their requirements, finally, two months ago. The engineering and construction firms obviously need time to design a system to meet the NRC standards, and prepare for it's construction.
So basically we're spending 15 million dollars on a rush job because the NRC has no fucking clue how businesses work, and allow no time adjustment for their indecision.
And the funny part is that even if a team of terrorists got past our already substantial security (both physical and personell), they'd have no fucking clue how to cause any damage that would extend beyond the plant or spread radiation to the public- figuring out such a thing requires years of studying the plant's most intimate workings.
Fuckin NRC.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Hell, the most-likely nuclear terrorism scenario in my estimation is someone purchasing a radiation-therapy machine and randomly zapping people with lethal doses from inside a truck-mounted setup. Given a cool million to purchase some used medical equipment, you don't even need to try to steal nuclear material from federal facilities.
It's worse that you think. A number of years ago (maybe 10 to 20?), the radiation detectors at Los Alamos went off when a delivery of patio furniture passed by. Turns out the cast iron in the furniture contained Cobalt-60. Tracing the shipment back, they found that the furniture had been made in Mexico from scrap metal. Someone in Mexico had sold a radiation therapy machine as scrap.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
You missed his point, there would be literally thousands of trucks / convoys needed to transport this across the country. Each being a target. .50 Cal BMG rifle can be bought by civilains with little or no background checks for as little as $1700 (with ammo for about $1 a round), this is a pretty big concern. 50 BMG will penetrate damn near anything and will have a nice range to boot. If you're bored (or if someone else is) figure out the kinetic energy that a 650 grain projectile has at 900m/s
Considering a
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No need to steal anything. A Big Bang in the storage facility would shut it down for many, many years. If you're after terror this would be pretty effective, especially if coupled with a DDOS, or even more dangerous, hack attack against the major financial/news sites. If you could manage to blow something up in Navada with the wind blowing towards Las Vagas you could cause a pretty large panic. In fact, you wouldn't even need to cause an explosion, a War of the Worlds type of incident caused by disrupting communications and planting false stories would work just as well.
My family and I were on vacation in the north-eastern United States a couple of years back. My dad wanted to check out the Three Mile Island vistor center, as he's a bionuclear physicist and is really geeked up over that kind of a thing. We had one of those Hertz rental cars with the GPS helper, so we checked and the visitor center was on there, so we told it to take us there. We pulled in where it told us to, into a street that wasn't much bigger than a driveway. Within a matter of moments we were boxed in by a few Humvees (not the street-legal models, the big should-have-treads things), and have guns pointed at us from all around. We're told very persistantly to slowly get out of the car and put our hands on the hood. We did so, they took our pictures, ran our fingerprints, called in two trucks full of troops to help the obviously overpowered platoon that was trying to keep a family of four under tight watch. Safeties were off, we were potential enemies. After an hour or so (and a search of us and the car) they let us go, told us to never came back, but were nice enough to point us in the direction of the -real- visitor's center. It was closed for the day -_-.
The Pentagon and WTC all have no-fly-zones, and look how that went... If no-one cares that several big passenger planes takes a 180 mid-flight and heads straight for said no-fly-zone with the transponder off and no radio contact, how can we (or _you_ since I don't live in the US) expect that a small Cessna or similar plane flying below radar coverage, carrying a small bomb, won't make it to it's destination? A nice destination would be the spent-fuel rod storage facilities at Indian Point or another plant... Blowing the wall up, releasing the water. Instant overheating and subsequent fire, which would last a long time and contaminate a rather large area, possibly killing tens of thousands of people.
Let me repost a comment I made from the Hafnium story. Depleted nuclear materials are still DEFINITELY dangerous. Heightened security stateside sounds like a case of closing the barn door after the horse got out...
Hey, kiddies. We're worried about the evilbadnasty terrorists getting their hands on rogue nukes from the former USSR that might be floating around out there, or worse, constructing their own 'dirty bomb' with internet-fueled recipies, sneak it into the land of the Great Satan and start nuke-nuke-nukin' on heaven's door in the name of Allah. Bush & Co. are shrieking 'For God's sake, don't let those crazy Muslim fundamentalists get hold of nuclear materials!'
Problem is we've already given them all the material anyone could ever want or need to make a 'dirty bomb', delivered right to their sandy li'l front doors courtesy of the United States Armed Services. That's right, kiddies, we're talking about DEPLETED URANIUM, that nuclear fairy dust that's now littering Iraq and Afghanistan by the megaton! Thanks to the fabled generosity of the good ol' USA, it's possible to drive around and pick up this stuff with nothing more than a shovel and a dedication to a deity stronger than your fear of radiation poisoning.
A dedicated Boy Scout could easily make either a low-yield nuclear bomb using enough 'spent' uranium to make a subcritical mass (remember, Mouseketeers, that 'spent' fuel rods are still highly radioactive and it just takes a lot more to reach subcritical mass than ordinary uranium) OR even more easily, mix the DU with conventional explosives to make a bomb with a radioactive plume capable of poisoning an entire city for decades!
Fun Fact for th' Day: The most recent draft of the Geneva Convention considers depleted uranium to be a 'weapon of mass destruction', as its effects linger for decades to centuries after a war has ended, causing such amazing things as severe birth defects, mental retardation, cancer and other ailments endemic to a high degree of radioactive contamination. Any nation employing DU in its weapons will be considered to be in serious breach of the Geneva accord. (Ho ho ho! Not that the US actually gives a damn about those silly Swiss! There's profits to be had, and it's a convenient way to dispose of all that nuclear waste that would otherwise require safe disposal!)
Check HERE and HERE for more info.