Nuclear plants warned of terrorist fire hazard

Fuel storage facilities must improve safeguards, says US report.

Power plants must do more to protect their radioactive waste from possible terrorist attacks, according to a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, the leading US scientific society.

The danger, according to the report, is that terrorists might start a fire in a power plant's spent-fuel pool, where radioactive waste is stored after it is removed from the reactor. "Under certain conditions a substantial amount of fission products can be released in a pool fire," says Carl Alexander, a materials scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and a member of the committee.

Power plants around the world use swimming-pool-like structures to store used fuel rods while they 'cool', or lose their radioactive potency. The water in the pool shields the outside world from radiation produced by the rods, as well as genuinely cooling the rods, which are physically hot when they come out of the reactor.

The panel decided that a terrorist strike on such a pool, using explosives or an aircraft, might drain the water, triggering a fire in the spent fuel rods, which are clad in radioactively stable, but flammable, zirconium metal. Although it would be difficult to attack such facilities, the panel admits, it argues that attacks "by knowledgeable terrorists with access to appropriate technical means" are a real possibility. <snip>

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050404/full/050404-8.html