Report Profiles Nuclear-Plant Attackers

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-exec/2006/feb/22/022209236.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - A government defense plan for nuclear power plants assumes an attack would come from less than half the number of Sept. 11 hijackers and they wouldn't be armed with rocket-propelled grenades or other weapons often used by terrorists overseas.

Such assumptions, say critics of the largely classified security document, could make plants vulnerable to a terrorist takeover even though the industry has pumped more than $1.2 billion into defenses at its 64 reactor sites in 31 states since the al-Qaida attacks in 2001.

Because of the sensitive nature of security issues, NRC officials declined in interviews to discuss specific details of the defense plan. They said the requirements, expected to be final later this year, will demand a level of security that is "reasonable" from a civilian guard force.

"I'm not going to get into numbers," said Michael Weber, deputy director of the NRC's office of security and incident response, who has been closely involved in developing the defense plan, known as the Design Basis Threat, or DBT.

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The fact is that there has never been a terrorist attack against a nuclear plant, nor even a covered up plot to attack a nuclear power plant.

On the other hand there have been terrorist attacks involving fossil fuels and millions if not billions of people are likely to die from global climate change.

Millions of people die each year from air pollution. Millions.

The number of rocket launched missiles fired in Japan, or the US, or France or Germany against nuclear power plants (or other facilities is zero. And yet we are asked to assume that the mere mention of such a possibility should be taken seriously. More seriously than global climate change maybe?

The standard mathematical approach for measuring risk is the expectation value which is the probability of an event multiplied by the number of people at risk. By this criteria even Chernobyl was a relatively minor event.

This calculation is certainly colored by the fact that there is little uncertainty about global climate change. It exists. Now.

The anti-nuclear case consists wholly of scare-mongering. More people will die this week from fossil fuels than have died in the entire history of nuclear power.

This is why the world has rejected the anti-nuclear case and is moving forward with new nuclear capacity.

Exajoule quantities of it.

This is because the world has recognized the following truth: There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

www.externe.info

Personally, I find it odd that someone who rages against the bushco regime uses the same terra terra terra tactics, but there you go.

http://nobodycouldhavepredicted.blogspot.com/

Nobody Could Have Predicted...

A tribute to Condoleeza Rice and George W. Bush who, despite voluminious evidence to the contrary, said, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," adding that "even in retrospect" there was "nothing" to suggest that" and "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," respectively.

were on the original target list of the 9/11 attackers.

Sorry to burst your bubble...