Word: nrc
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...nuclear industry absorbed the lessons of 9/11 and made sufficient adjustments to the way plants are guarded? The DOE, which controls the 11 sites that house nuclear weapons and the materials used to build them, has significantly improved its standards. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which oversees 103 reactors run by private operators at 64 sites across 31 states, says it has too. "What is in place right now is sufficient to give us confidence that these plants will be able to defend themselves," NRC chairman Nils Diaz tells TIME. But a tightly held NRC document reviewed by TIME raises...
Though the idea of suicidal pilots crashing planes into reactors provoked sensational headlines after 9/11, studies commissioned by the NRC and the nuclear industry concluded that the chances of an aerial attack producing a major release of radioactivity are low. The NRC believes the concrete-and-steel containment shielding most portions of a nuclear plant would withstand being hit by an airplane. Other experts, including a recent National Academy of Sciences (N.A.S.) panel, disagree, saying the particular design and vulnerabilities of each plant make such blanket assurances meaningless...
...case, the NRC does not require plant operators to defend against air attacks. A California antinuclear group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, recently asked the NRC to order that shields of I-beams and steel cables be built around nuclear plants to stop airplanes from crashing into them. Antiaircraft batteries and the troops to operate them would also help but could pose hazards to innocent aircraft drifting off course. NRC officials say the likelihood of installing missiles or shields is virtually nil. The agency believes the place to thwart an aerial-attack plot is at the airport...
...thyroid cancer has not changed in Poland, while it has jumped an alarming 100-fold among some Belarussian children. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now giving states the option of stocking up on potassium iodide for communities near the nation's 103 nuclear power plants. Still, the NRC emphasizes that the drug is not the next Cipro. Says NRC spokesman William Beecher: "It can protect only one part of the body against one radioactive element...
...tower isn't the only risk. Periodically the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has staged mock attacks against facilities, and the faux intruders won half the time--meaning they were in a position to cause severe damage. It's a target-rich environment: not only is the core vulnerable, but one NRC study also concluded that if terrorists blew up the cooling pool that holds the spent fuel, the radiation could kill 6% of the people living within 10 miles of the plant...