Slashdot Mirror
Security At Nuclear Facilities: Danger Likely Lurks From Within
mdsolar (1045926) sends this excerpt from the Stanford Report:
"Insider threats are the most serious challenge confronting nuclear facilities in today's world, a Stanford political scientist says. In every case of theft of nuclear materials where the circumstances of the theft are known, the perpetrators were either insiders or had help from insiders, according to Scott Sagan and his co-author, Matthew Bunn of Harvard University, in a research paper published this month by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 'Given that the other cases involve bulk material stolen covertly without anyone being aware the material was missing, there is every reason to believe that they were perpetrated by insiders as well,' they wrote. And theft is not the only danger facing facility operators; sabotage is a risk as well ... While there have been sabotage attempts in the United States and elsewhere against nuclear facilities conducted by insiders, the truth may be hard to decipher in an industry shrouded in security, [Sagan] said. The most recent known example occurred in 2012 – an apparent insider sabotage of a diesel generator at the San Onofre nuclear facility in California. Arguably the most spectacular incident happened at South Africa's Koeberg nuclear power plant (then under construction) in South Africa in 1982 when someone detonated explosives directly on a nuclear reactor."
Yeah, I mean think about the security of the oil infrastructure. Sure it's not "radiation," but an oil spill is a big deal. Oil is already shipped in takner cars which have a nasty habit of exploding on their own, much less with a little help. Then you have all those huge pipelines, and oil tankers. Not to mention offshore rigs, or messing with a fracking operation.
When it comes to energy or environmental security, nuclear plants are not where I would start.
This isn't even getting into the radiation deaths caused by, unguarded, stolen medical equipment.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
The most serious security threat facing anything is the insider threat. Retail theft, copyright infringement from the movie/publishing industries, keeping trade secrets, etc.
"an apparent insider sabotage of a diesel generator at the San Onofre nuclear facility in California"
Federal nuclear regulators investigate failure of backup San Onofre diesel generator during testing
San Onofre - how did coolant end up in emergency diesel generator oil system?
that's the best example they could come up with for the USA in the past few decades? Let me tell you about that incident, it was found that some dumb-ass had poured engine coolant into the oil tank. "Suspected Possible Sabotage" read the headlines, but smart money would be on stupid mistake as that would not have caused damage to reactor even if generators needed, it was part of redundant set which is required in USA.
Sabotage at nuke plants is largely a non-issue, too hard to make something bad happen. Worst case you'd trip the reactor offline and make the shareholders angry at the lost power generating time.
Now, let's assume you had access to the fuel long enough to get it out of the pool. You would receive a lethal dose of radiation in 36 seconds; enough to kill you within a month. Even if death doesn't come for weeks, you would be rapidly debilitated- which of course would leave you immobile next to something giving off massive amounts of radiation, so I imagine you'd be dead-dead within a half hour. Probably much less.
Now, there is spent fuel that's had several years to decay sitting in dry storage on most nuclear sites, but they're kept in casks and bunkers which are so robust, you're not going to be able to steal or breach them in less time than it takes for three states worth of Law Enforcement and FBI to come crashing down on your party.
That fuel in dry storage would still kill you, but it would take longer.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
And who's fault is that ?
Lead, Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, (insert your favorite neurological poison here) is poisonous forever. All the many tons of carcinogenic materials dumped into the Fukushima environment by the oil refinery that burned for a week and many other environmental disasters got 1% of the attention the nuclear accident got.
Radioactive elements decay into stable elements eventually loosing all of it's radioactivity.
Plus alpha radiation from Uranium, Plutonium, Thorium is the easiest radiation to protect ourselves from. A sheet of paper is enough to stop alpha rays.
So if you catch my drift the most important aspect of the subject is educating the people that radiation is way less serious than it's cracked up to be.
I'm not saying that very high levels of radiation is harmless, it can kill or cause cancer.
But that dirty bomb scenarios are way less serious than the media advertises.
Consider Chernobyl acted like the biggest dirty bomb ever detonated. Notice there was no nuclear explosion, the explosion and subsequent fire was chemical.
Even with all USSR incompetence after the accident just around 100 people died so far. Predicted worse case scenarios is 4000-6000 total deaths in the long run.
Should iodine tablets have been administered a very high percentage of those predicted cancer deaths and cancer cases could have been avoided (perhaps as high as 80%).
A cobalt, strontium, caesium dirty bomb is no cake walk, but it's not tens of thousands of deaths even if it happens right in Manhattan, Boston or some other high density area.
What we have is a mass radiophobia problem. Just as irrational as people with aracnophobia or something of the kind. Sure we shouldn't go playing with spiders, but they don't deserve our panic.
No, they just release more.
Don't repeat words you've heard grown-ups use. Half of them don't know what it means either.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."