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| French plutonium at 'extreme risk' of terrorist attack |
| 2005-03-15 |
| Plutonium being transported across France could be attacked by terrorists and turned into dirty bombs in a matter of minutes, a US nuclear security expert is warning. Cargoes of plutonium oxide are taken by road at least once a month from nuclear plants at La Hague in the north to Marcoule in the south to make fuel for French reactors. But according to Ronald Timm, a consultant from Lemont, Illinois, US, and for 5 years a senior nuclear security advisor to the US Clinton administration, the shipments are very poorly guarded. Each shipment has less than a dozen guards and they could all be killed in a surprise attack by as few as three armed terrorists, he argues. Then it would only take "seconds" to break open the transport casks with power tools or explosives, he claims, and to start releasing plutonium into the environment. Another possibility is that the plutonium could be stolen with the intention of making it into nuclear bombs. The risk to the health and safety of the public in France is "of grave concern", Timm says. "The protection afforded these everyday shipments is virtually non-existent," he claims. In a study commissioned by the anti-nuclear group, Greenpeace, he concludes that they are at "extreme risk" of terrorist attack. The plutonium casks transported from the US were a "prime sabotage target" but were only designed to withstand accidents and not "malevolent attacks", Timm alleges. However, this is rejected by the French nuclear company, Cogema, as "absolutely wrong". The casks are approved as safe by scientists from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, says Cogema's head of transport, Henry-Jacques Neau. "They are able to withstand deliberate attack, and are extremely safe," he told New Scientist. It is always possible to imagine "sensationalist" scenarios but in reality the security arrangements were "perfectly adequate", Neau says. "Every time Greenpeace gets experts - or pseudo-experts - to produce reports they have proved to be of no value." The Froggie is right that Greenpees reports usually replace reality with fantasy. However, they may, occassionaly, by accicent, nail something. He better be right. |
| Posted by:Sobiesky |
| #4 This reminds me of our so called friend Gasoline. Do not inhale large amounts (huff) it can cause lasting liver disease altho you may see the Blue Lady, this is not a good payoff. Glue: Aka the good stuff. Minor liver damage, Blue Lady lives under your bed and cries for your soul. Glue White: The stuff you scarf in the 5th grade. Nurse Sister hates you and has laid a curse. You will be notified. |
| Posted by: Fr. Kolac 2005-03-15 6:13:02 PM |
| #3 Plutonium is sometimes described in media reports as the most toxic substance known to man, although there is general agreement among experts in the field that this is incorrect. As of 2003, there has yet to be a single human death officially attributed to plutonium exposure. Naturally-occurring radium is about 200 times more radiotoxic than plutonium, and some organic toxins like Botulism toxin are billions of times more toxic than plutonium. The alpha radiation it emits does not penetrate the skin, but can irradiate internal organs when plutonium is inhaled or ingested. Extremely small particles of plutonium on the order of micrograms can cause lung cancer if inhaled into the lungs. Considerably larger amounts may cause acute radiation poisoning and death if ingested or inhaled; however, so far, no human is known to have died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies. Because plutonium has no gamma radiation, health effects are not likely to occur while working with plutonium, unless it is breathed in or swallowed somehow. Link |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-03-15 4:34:19 PM |
| #2 Here are the specs, found here, for the casks: Radioactive waste is currently shipped in specially designed containers, called casks that function as barriers against the release of radiation during transport. Casks are heavily shielded to reduce the radiation to the allowable limits established by NRC and must be certified by NRC to withstand extreme conditions. Several different kinds of casks are currently in use for different kinds of shipments — and several others are being developed for possible future use in shipments like those that would go to Yucca Mountain. One cask that DOE has used frequently to transport spent nuclear fuel is made of steel and lined with aluminum, has walls approximately eight inches thick, and weighs 26 tons. Federal regulations do not dictate a particular kind of container to be used, but do specify particular requirements that any container must meet before it can be certified for use. Casks for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, called Type B transportation casks, must be shown to retain their integrity and not leak radioactive material following four tests — with the first three done one immediately after the other: 1) A 30-foot drop in which the container’s weakest point strikes a flat, unyielding surface 2) A 40-inch drop in which the container’s weakest point strikes a six-inch-diameter steel rod eight inches long 3) Engulfment of the entire container in a fire of 1,475°F for 30 minutes 4) Immersion of the entire container under three feet of water for eight hours Presently, there are no requirements for physical testing of transportation casks. Cask designs must only demonstrate that they meet physical testing requirements through computer simulations. Scale model tests are optional. However, it is worth noting that in the 1980s Sandia National Laboratories conducted full-scale crashes of transportation casks in various scenarios, such as a train hitting a truck loaded with a cask, and a train carrying a cask and running into cement walls. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-03-15 4:23:12 PM |
| #1 I swear, it must be International Day of Typos or something in water today... PIMF: Accicent=accident. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-03-15 3:43:43 PM |