Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Plans to Tighten Nuclear Power Plant Security
CDMA_Demo writes "The 103 nuclear reactors running in USA can voluntarily agree to follow a new 15 page update to a 1996 regulatory guide. The update notes possibility of "unauthorized, undesirable, and unsafe intrusions", and recommends measures aginst such activities. It also recommends such facilities to be cut off from external networks: "Remote access...[that may pose a potential security risk]...should not be implemented". The Slammer worm in 2001 managed to bring down the network at Ohio's David-Besse nuclear plant and concerns kept growing at the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."
I once was able to tour the nuclear power plant in Charlevoix, MI, before they decommissioned. I was a little fella at the time.
Looks like that kind of educational oppertunity won't be happening as frequently, now. IIRC, that was the first tour they'd given since the plant was opened. That gives you a sense of perspective as to how common such oppertunities are.
Though other plants may perhaps hold more frequent tours, I doubt few outsiders will get to see the turbines and dynamos of an operational plant.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In a lot of cases, people don't mind a nuke power plant - as long as it's (all together now) Not In My Back Yard. I worked for a company that did nuclear dosimetry, and was in and out of power plants all over the country; believe me, they are very physically secure.
Most of Californicate's troubles with insufficient energy is that almost nobody in the state is willing to be anywhere near ANY kind of power plant, nuke or not. So the plants get built elsewhere, and Calif. pays premium rates to import it (when they can get it). Dumbasses.
FYI, the state of Texas is effectively isolated from the grid the rest of the country uses - they generate enough power for "internal" usage, and that's pretty much it. Take a look at a power distribution map some time, you'll see.--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
It's a draft. They're suggesting that everyone starts conforming now, instead of waiting until it's approved and made mandatory. Surely this is a good thing.
I agree with you that it's scary that this has come so late though.
What's the population of Chernobyl these days?
OMFG, one of our reactors is MISSING!!!!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
My uncle is a security guard at a nuclear power plant. He is 59 years old and his occupation before nuclear powerlant security guard was truck driver. He is the most honest and trusworthy man you will ever meet, but he is 59 years old and had a triple bypass last year.
Delta Force operators come on an occasional announced, i.e. they know they're coming, basis to try to infiltrate. Supposedly they have succeeded every time.
What's the population of Chernobyl these days?
Very low, due to a very poorly designed reactor, a shutdown of the insufficient safety systems, and a government that didn't care about its people. None of those conditions exists in US nuclear power plants.
Safety upgrades in nuclear power plants happen whenever somebody messes up, so that they don't mess up in the same way again. This upgrade is nothing surprising.
1. Terrorists storm a reactor and try to steal uranium or plutonium to make bombs.
Not likely. Assuming attackers could shoot their way past the beefed-up phalanx of armed guards, traffic barriers and guard towers that now surround every nuclear plant, they'd still have to fight their way into the reactor building through multiple levels of remote-activated blast doors--where access requires the right key card and palm print--to get to the spent-fuel pond, says Michael Wallace, president of Constellation Energy's generation group, which operates five nuclear reactors. The pond is where highly radioactive used fuel sits in 14-foot-long stainless steel assemblies cooling under 40 feet of water. Terrorists couldn't just grab this stuff and run because, unshielded, it gives off a lethal dose of radiation in less than a minute. To avoid exposure, terrorists would have to force workers to use a giant crane inside the reactor to load the assemblies into huge transfer casks, then open the mammoth doors of the reactor building and use another crane to lift the cask onto a waiting truck--all the while being shot at by the National Guard.
And While we are at it, How about crashing a plane into the reactor?
2. Terrorists crash a plane into a reactor, leading to overheating and a meltdown.
Even less likely. Assume that terrorists could get past tightened airport security and fight off passengers to get through new, improved cockpit doors and take control of a plane. Even then they'd have to crash the jet directly into a reactor to have any chance of breaking containment. In 2002 the Electric Power Research Institute performed a $1 million computer simulation to assess such a risk. Conclusion: A direct hit from a 450,000-pound Boeing 767 flying low to the ground at 350mph would ruin a plant's ability to make electricity but not break the reactor's cement shield. Reason: A reactor, smaller in profile than the Pentagon or World Trade Center, would not absorb the full force of the plane's impact. And, for all the force behind it, a plane, built of aluminum and titanium, has far less mass than the 20-foot-thick steel-and-concrete sarcophagus enclosing a nuclear reactor. It would be like dropping a watermelon on a fire hydrant from 100 feet.
Subscription required: Stopping the Bad Guys
"no one could've predicted this"
... "Rice stressed that there was no way anyone could have predicted that terrorists would use hijacked planes as missiles and attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."
:
One such dumbshit is Condoleezza Rice
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90453&page=1/
Even though saying that they had intelligence that Bin Laden planned to hijack domestic US planes
and yet
TIME Magazine (Domestic edition), 'NEVER SAFE ENOUGH,' by Hugh Sidey, November 14, 1994 Volume 144, No. 20
During the cold war, when security agents used to play war games involving terrorist threats to the White House, the one unsolvable problem was a commercial airliner loaded with explosives working its way into the landing pattern at Washington National Airport, then veering off for a suicide plunge into the White House. The only answer was to shut down the airport, which Congress refused to consider, since its proximity and reserved parking spaces are prized legislative perks.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
That's because US reactors are, of course, models of safe design and operation.
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.