[ignatz_q]

I don't see a lot of people claiming that the energy release would be all that great from a waste pool attack (including BAS). Mostly, the argument is that radioactive material would be spread quite far, with disatrous consequences. It's not analagous to a nuclear weapon, but the analogy to a radiological weapon (popularly called the "dirty nuke") is quite appropriate.

[chimera]

I don't see a lot of people claiming that the energy release would be all that great from a waste pool attack (including BAS). Mostly, the argument is that radioactive material would be spread quite far, with disatrous consequences. It's not analagous to a nuclear weapon, but the analogy to a radiological weapon (popularly called the "dirty nuke") is quite appropriate.

There would be some release, but it would not match the hysteria being spread about in the press about this scenario. Do some simple calculations, Assume an average burnup for commercial nuclear fuel. Assume an average decay time. Use the Way-Wigner relationships to estimate total activity. Apply a reasonable diluation factor and dispersion coefficient for external energy delivery. It just doesn't add up.

External energy input simply doesn't drive material around as efficiently as internal (stored) energy release. Here's an example. Compare the dispersion resulting from an exploding firecracker (stored energy release) to an equivalent energy delivered to the same material by a hammer blow. See the difference? Same effect here.