Nuclear Plant Would Not Survive WTC-type Impact

AM 600 KOGO (San Diego) | 26 Sept 2001 (around 8AM local, repeated at 8:15) | Alison Ross, reporting for AM 600 KOGO (San Diego)

[newzjunkey]

Paraphrase: "Officials at the San Onofre nuclear power plant say a reactor would not survive the type of attack that occured on the WTC towers."

She also mentioned, "...but official point out the power plant is not in any commercial flight path."

At 8:15AM, she updates with (paraphrase) "...power plant officials say it was not designed to withstand the impact of a commercial jet because it was never seen as a credible threat."

Listen Live (RealAudio)

[newzjunkey]

There's been some talk on FR that such reactors are designed to withstand the impact of a commercial aircraft and routinely tested.

This news report, citing an official, says that's false.

About San Onofre:

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a jointly owned enterprise among SCE (75% ownership), San Diego Gas & Electric (20%), and the cities of Riverside and Anaheim. Today, SONGS provides nearly 20 percent of the power to more than 15 million people in Southern California -- enough power to serve 2.75 million households.

[wjeanw]

I couldn't find the statement by the power company refuting the news report. Where is it in the site?

[newzjunkey]

Woops, I miswrote that.

[TomGuy]

She also mentioned, "...but official point out the power plant is not in any commercial flight path."

Well, duh! I don't think the WTC or Pentagon were on any commercial flight path either.

[newzjunkey]

I meant, the news report says the Freeper claims are flase. Freepers made claims that power plants are designed and tested to withstand such attack. There's NO official statement discounting this AM 600 reports this morning.

They've just been repeated the story. Here's an exact quote (again Alison reporting) from the 8:30 update(I'll see if I can't get the audio up someplace):

"...and security tighter at nuclear power plants across the nation. Also here in San Diego, where officials at San Onofre said the nuclear power plant would not survive a direct hit from the kinds of passenger jets used in the attack on America."

[newzjunkey]

Yeah, that was my reaction. Hijacker's wouldn't think of going outside predetermined flight paths, right? Shocking.

It's a statement meant to be "comforting" but would only reassure the most dim listener stuck out in the morning traffic still trying to finish shaving or apply makeup.

[Poohbah]

Define "survive." Does it mean "remain operational?" Or does it mean "core breach?"

I doubt that it means the latter.

[gridlock]

After the big Boeing hits I don't think they are going to fire it right back up. But that doesn't mean there is going to be a big mushroom cloud, either.

[Nov3]

Having worked at the Grand Gulf Station as an operator I can assure you that the Containment wouldn't be breached by anything short of an ICBM. The scale of these plants are massive. The only chance of a disaster is to take out all power (plant, grid, 3 backup generators, and battery backup) while the plant was running full power. Even then the containment is designed to prevent release of radiation during the possible resultant meltdown from decay heat. If you want to worry about plants worry about chemical plants.

[Robert357]

There is not much that man can build that could be proven to survive the crash of two large commercial jets.

Many years ago (actually a few decades ago) is use to be involved in the design of nuclear power plants. The containment building was at one time designed to withstand a telephone pole and large pipe traveling horizontally at huricane or cyclone speeds. At one time a containment building would withstand a small military jet. The problem with an airplane impact is two-fold: the fire and the engines. Think of the engines as concentrated chunks of metal, like a bullet. If one has to stop the engines of a modern large jet with a containment building that is a pretty impressive task and nuclear reactors below many feet underground as opposed to on the surface or above grade.

In doing radiation release calculations and their impacts associated with a worst case accident, I was horrified at the degree of ultra conservatism that was required to do the calculations and how they grossly overstated any human or biological impact. Yes, there would be a mess and yes 3-Mile Island was a mess, but there wasn't and wouldn't be any mega deaths associated with radiation released from a plane crashing into a reactor.

So rather than worry about something this remote, lets worry about stopping planes from being highjacked in the first place. After all, oil refineries, sports stadiums, natural gas storage facilities, liquified natural gas storage facilities, large dams with reservoirs, chemical plants, explosive factories, .......(the list goes on) could also be targeted as well and produce more serious human and environmental damage. Personally, lets work on the source of the potential problem than try to protect all possible targets of jet collisions.

[Jolly Rodgers]

How Columbia Generating Station Works

Like all thermal power plants Columbia Generating Station uses heat to boil water to make steam. The steam turns a turbine-generator that produces electricity. The big difference between Columbia Generating Station and other thermal plants is in how the heat is produced.

Nuclear power plants produce heat by fissioning atoms of uranium. Fissioning occurs when a subatomic particle, a neutron, strikes and is absorbed into the nucleus of a uranium atom. This makes the nucleus unstable and causes it to split. Heat is produced as the result, as are additional neutrons. These free neutrons cause other uranium atoms to fission, resulting in a self-sustaining chain reaction.

Each fission releases a small amount of heat, but in a nuclear reactor there are billions of atoms fissioning every second. The fissioning takes place within the nuclear fuel core, which is housed in a heavy steel reactor vessel. The fuel core contains 153 tons of uranium dioxide fuel enclosed in 764 fuel assemblies.

The uranium fuel contains an enormous amount of energy. One fuel pellet not much bigger than a pencil eraser contains the energy equivalent of:

2,000 pounds of coal;
149 gallons of oil;
or
17,000 cubic feet of natural gas.

The extreme heat generated in the reactor turns water into high-pressure steam. The steam is piped to the turbine-generator. The steam flows through fan blades, causing the turbines to spin at high speed. An electric generator bolted to the turbine spins to generate electricity.

After it flows through the turbines, the steam goes through a condenser where it is cooled and changed back into liquid water. The water is pumped back to the reactor to be reheated and turned back into steam. The heat from the condenser is released into the air from six cooling towers outside the plant.

There are two separate water loops in Columbia Generating Station: one through the reactor and turbines; the other through the condenser and cooling towers. The two water loops are not allowed to mix.

Columbia Generating Station is a boiling water reactor designed by the General Electric company. The main difference between a boiling water reactor and the pressurized water reactors also used in the U.S. is how the steam is produced. In a boiling water reactor the steam is produced inside the reactor vessel. In a pressurized water reactor the water is turned to steam in separate chambers called steam generators.

The plume from Columbia Generating Station’s cooling towers is visible for more than 50 miles on a cool day. It looks like steam, but it isn’t. The cloud is made of water vapor only a few degrees warmer than the surrounding air. On a cold winter day the plume can be seen rising thousands of feet above the plant. But on a hot summer afternoon the plume is invisible.

Safety First

Columbia Generating Station, like all commercial nuclear power plants in this country, is equipped with elaborate and redundant safety systems. The purpose of these safety systems is to protect the public, employees and the environment from the harmful radioactive materials inside the plant.

To prevent the release of radioactivity Columbia Generating Station employs six major barriers:

The fuel is a non-soluble ceramic.
The fuel is contained in corrosion-resistant zirconium tubes.
The reactor vessel where the fuel is held is made of steel six-to-nine inches thick.
A leak-tight steel containment vessel surround the reactor.
A thick concrete shield wall surround the containment vessel to shield plant workers from radiation.
The Reactor Building is equipped with high-efficiency filtration systems and forms a secondary containment.

The plant design also employs a "defense in depth" philosophy that takes into account a multitude of possible accidents. The most serious accident would be a loss of coolant to the nuclear fuel core caused by a large water pipe breaking.

To prevent the loss of cooling water several emergency core cooling systems are built into Columbia Generating Station. Any one of them can supply needed cooling water to the reactor vessel at a moment’s notice. These systems are powered by three independent sources of standby emergency power.

[Milosevic2]

For the 21th time : ALL EXPLAINED HERE

[Egg]

Listen, if they're going to fly airliners into any more of our infrastructure, they're going to have to bring their own aircraft into our airspace. I do not believe that passengers will henceforth sit idle knowing that they're probably going to be crashed to their deaths, and the equipment terrorists would need to disable everyone on board while they do so would not squeeze through even the most lax of airline security.

[newzjunkey]

Well, I doubt it would be 'operational'. "Survive" could mean anything--it's a pretty neutral word and about the depth I'd expect from the morning news.

There are more concerns than just 'meltdown' or radiation.

There's the electricity that would be lost in a state already known to have electricity problems.

If there's any more detail today from local news sources, or in a press release or officals interviewed with local talk hosts, I encourage San Diego Freepers to add to this thread.

[cav68]

Well stated, chemical plants are so plentiful and no one mentions them. Still in Health Physics 25 years

[Poohbah]

Exactly my point.

[Zathras]

There was a really cool test done years ago where a fighter jet was flown into a 1MT block
of cement at 600mph. It was a test of the proposed containment vessel. The jet was pulverized
and nothing happend to the block.

Of course a fighter jet is not a jetliner.

[LurkedLongEnough]

***Nuclear Regulatory Commisssion Press Release***

[newzjunkey]

In San Diego, we have what I guess could be called a fuel farm across the road from our football stadium. That area *is* in a flight path. I've flown over it on approach a number of times. There's plenty of potential targets.

[newzjunkey]

Thanks.

Here's one quote:

Q: What would happen if a large commercial airliner was intentionally crashed into a nuclear power plant?

A:. Nuclear power plants have inherent capability to protect public health and safety through such features as robust containment buildings, redundant safety systems, and highly trained operators. They are among the most hardened structures in the country and are designed to withstand extreme events, such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. In addition, all NRC licenses with significant radiological material have emergency response plans to enable the mitigation of impacts on the public in the event of a release. However, the NRC did not specifically contemplate attacks by aircraft such as Boeing 757s or 767s and nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand such crashes. Detailed engineering analyses of a large airliner crash have not yet been performed.

In other words, they're not sure but I'd imagine someone's working on simulations now.