Secret US List of Civil Nuclear Sites Released

eldavojohn writes "Someone accidentally released a 266-page report on hundreds of sites in the US for stockpiling and storing hazardous nuclear materials for civilian use. While some ex-officials and experts don't find it to be a serious breach, the Federation of American Scientists are calling it a 'a one-stop shop for information on US nuclear programs.' The document contains information about Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia, and opinions seem to be split on whether it's a harmless list or terrorist risk. One thing is for sure: it was taken down after the New York Times inquired to the Government Accountability Office about it."

Comments

"for civilian use"

[wjh31]

there is a huge difference between nuclear material for civilian use, and weapons grade stuff. Even if some terrorists were able to get a-hold of civilian nuclear material they probably wouldnt be able to make a nuke. Having said that, a dirty bomb requires no expertese atall

Re:"for civilian use"

[dubiago]

There were some pretty hefty reassurances during the Clinton Administration about the nature of nuclear proliferation when they gave North Korea nuclear reactors; they'd never make nuclear weapons as a result of having the reactors. Flash forward to a week ago, and they've detonated a ~20KT nuclear device. Some of this may just be the government playing C.Y.A., and flashing a "Don't Panic" sign. And, as you point out, dirty bombs aren't that hard to make. They may not have the bang that their fission/fusion cousins have, but they'll certainly make you miserable.

Re:"for civilian use"

[dave420]

The point of terrorism is to coerce people, pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less. The method of terrorism, however, are as you stated - by using violence or the threat of violence.

Re:"for civilian use"

[vlm]

Oh that irony: "Mild, harmless incident". Three Mile Island nearly blew off as later Chernobyl [wikipedia.org] - it was just luck that the crew found the error before.

Flat out blatant scaremongering misinformation.

Chernobyl used graphite as a moderator. Purified coal. Burns great. Perfect way to vaporize the fuel all over the countryside. No problem getting the smoke out of the containment dome, since they didn't have one.

TMI, like pretty much all non-Russian plants, uses water as a moderator. Not exactly a great fuel for vaporizing fuel rods. Containment dome designed to hold specifically for this situation. It worked as designed. Mild and harmless because it was designed to fail that way, and did.

I wont even bother listing differences like positive vs negative void coefficients that acted in our favor.

Also it was not luck that the TMI guys found the stuck valve... The third shift would have sat on their hinders all day in mystification because they had an inaccurate preconceived notion as to what is going on due to some broken equipment. Maybe they would have figured it out eventually, if they drank enough coffee, maybe not. However, the first shift guys came in with no preconceived notions to dispel, looked at all the gauges, more or less said "WTF were you thinking?", and shut it all down no problemo pretty much instantly.

Re:"for civilian use"

[paeanblack]

Three mile island was a design failure that has been addressed and fixed. The coolant leak which resulted in low coolant causing resulted in the wrong procedures being implemented and the suspect of faulty sensors. We now measure coolant levels not only in the feed, but in transition through the piping before and after the reactor. There are backup coolant lines to boot.

There will be another Three Mile Island-scale accident in the future
There will be another Exxon Valdez
There will be another Cleveland East
There will be another Tay Bridge, Tacoma Narrows, and Hyatt Regency
There will be another Bhopal
There will be another Tenerife, Saudia Tristar, and Aloha 243
There will be another St Francis Dam
There will be another Titanic

There will be another Chernobyl

Industrial/Engineering/Transportation disasters will continue to happen in every industry. Nuclear power is not immune.

However, arguing against nuclear power on that basis alone is like arguing against bridges and airplanes because they collapse and crash and kill people.

I think the big picture is that once they realized the sensors wasn't at fault and the problem was a lack of coolant verses ineffective coolant-bad readings, figured out a plan, vented for safety and enacted the plan to control the reactor, the biggest problem was the lack of ability to evacuate the surrounding and potentially effected population.

All of the disasters above have a commonality: people making decisions on incomplete information, because of the malfunction/poor maintenance of sensors/simple parts or the system entering an unanticipated state. Most of the time that this happens, people make the right decision, and the public doesn't hear about it. Sometimes the wrong decisions are made and people die.

The Three mile Island accidence is pretty much impossible to happen again

The exact same confluence of events that caused TMI will happen again and again. The technology will be different, but the people will be the same. The way to extend the intervals between major disasters is not be studying where the technology went wrong, but where the people went wrong. We'll never build another TMI-design reactor again, so the technical details are moot.

Re:"for civilian use"

[Chris Mattern]

That Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were completely different nuclear plants was not the point:

No, it's exactly the point.

The point was that Chernobyl exploded and caused many casualties and a highly contaminated environment, while Three Mile Island had luck.

No, Three Mile Island made several critical design decisions that prevented a massive disaster, and it had operators who could understand what they were looking at. That is not luck. That is the opposite of luck.

Re:glad they took it down.....

[Ethanol-fueled]

Oh, well. At least they still have Google Earth to tell them, "Hey, terrorists, don't look here. There's nothing sekrit about our blurred base, move along."

Scary

[Peteyo311]

I am I the only one that thinks this is a very odd list to have "accidentally" released?

Let's be really honest here...

[DragonTHC]

If a clandestine organization has the funds, logistics, and operatives to carry out an attack on these facilities, they already know about them.

Who didn't know about los alamos, livermore, or sandia?

Re:Let's be really honest here...

[vlm]

Or any hospital with a radiology department, or any college offering a nuclear energy engineering degree, etc.

What's actually going on is a battle inside the government over how to excuse our defenses using two diametrically opposed strategies. Its good to see a failure of cooperation in the government, that gives some hope to the citizens.

One govt spokes-clown talks up inadequate defenses by making fun of the opposition. The idea is to compare the opposition to a bad mork and mindy episode or some other "make fun of the foreigner" cultural phenomenon. The purposed of the propaganda is to spread the idea that the opposition is too stupid to figure out where the target is because they aren't smart like us americans. Even the dumbest american knows, if you're looking for a sensitive target to attack, merely look for the "blurred" areas on google maps, but a dumb furriner could never figure that out. So, its OK that our defenses are no good, since our fiercest opponent is only Mork from Ork as portrayed by Robin Williams.

On the other hand some government clowns like to excuse inadequate defenses by claiming the opposition was stronger than the bad guy in a james bond movie. I actually saw one govt spokes-clown on TV after 9-11 rambling on about how it must have taken an extremely large amount of money, unbelievable training, and immense organizational skills to do the 9-11 attacks. Which is pretty stupid since fundamentally all they did was buy a couple airline tickets for the same day, about as astounding as any convention organizer. That propaganda has the purpose of making us feel OK that our defenses fail because the "others" are so strong.

So much xenophobia, expressed so many different ways....

Oddly the two propaganda crowds seem to fight each other because they pompously think their BS is better that the other guys BS. So this story is really that the "dumb furriner crowd", whom thought it would be funny propaganda to list all the obvious targets that no stoopid furriner could ever figure out but all red blooded americans obviously already know thus proving the furriners is dumb, is under heavy attack from the "james bond villian crowd" whom is doing the scare mongering thing by claiming the only protection we have is goldfinger doesn't know where our "gold" is located...

Re:incompetent government agency of an incompetent

[Anonymous Coward]

The government has recently been a circus of one distraction after another. If they really wanted yet another distraction all they'd have to do is leak info about Sotomayor being a socialist (or a lesbian or an atheist, etc.) and the media wouldn't touch a real issue for months. Not that it matters. The American people are so inundated with manufactured outrage that we wouldn't know a genuine scandal if it bit us on the nose.

put down your pitchforks

[commodoresloat]

If you vigilantes sit still for a second and actually RTFA you'll see that there aren't any "national secrets" that were leaked here -- this information was "sensitive" and its release is embarrassing at best, but hardly a hanging offense.

On another note, I wonder if you felt the same way about the leak of a covert agent's identity during the Bush Administration? Were you hoping to see Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, or Dick Cheney in a noose?

Re:put down your pitchforks

[ilblissli]

yes, i think the law should apply to everyone.