Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.3 The Costs of Utilizing Nuclear Technologies
$
Environmental
costs
Dollar
costs
National security
costs
s$ISRUPTINGELECTRICALPOWERORCOOLINGWATERSUPPLYTOAREACTOR
s$RAININGCOOLINGWATERFROMSPENTFUELPONDS2UFF
Any of these actions could lead to a massive release of radioactivity. Such operations would require
sophisticated organization, advance planning, considerable skill, and coordination. None would
require use of weapons, technical skills, or tactics that have not been used previously by terrorists
in attacks such as the Pan Am jumbo jet bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988; the Aum
Shinrikyo nerve gas attacks on Tokyo subways in 1997; the simultaneous New York World Trade
Center and Pentagon attacks in 2001; and the multiple bombings of commuter trains in Madrid
in March 2004 (Ruff 2006).
Nuclear facilities are also vulnerable to attempts by terrorists to acquire fissile materials that
may be used to construct a “dirty” bomb (Bunn and Wier 2006) that could be exploded at a tar-
get of choice. Fuel enrichment and fabrication facilities, as well as temporary spent fuel storage
facilities containing quantities of radioactive materials with long half-lives, might be especially
attractive to terrorists wishing to construct such explosives. The IAEA has documented more than
650 instances of intercepted smuggling of radioactive materials over the past decade, including
eighteen cases of seizure of stolen plutonium or highly enriched uranium (Bunn and Wier 2006).
A small group of people—or even a single person—could release enough radioactivity to make
much of the United States uninhabitable (Lovins and Lovins 1982, 2).
 
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