This is part of IEEE Spectrum's special report: Nuclear Power Gets a Second Look
Of the countless scenarios of terrorist mayhem, none quickens the pulse quite like the menace of a nuclear bomb, and for good reason. A nuclear weapon embodies essentially everything a terrorist could hope for: the ability to kill at least tens of thousands of people at once, a fiery explosion that reverberates globally in images of death and destruction, and a lingering, lethal legacy, in the form of radioactive fallout.
Fortunately, most terrorist groups are transient, geographically dispersed, and limited in their technical resources, all factors that hardly conduce to building a nuclear bomb. Admittedly, there are shortcuts, such as buying the bomb-grade materials or even an entire weapon on the black market. But those options are somewhat less accessible than they were in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, before the United States and other countries spent hundreds of millions of dollars shoring up Russia's loose and antiquated system of nuclear safeguards.
In fact, in light of last September's low-tech but catastrophic attacks, building a nuclear bomb suddenly seems an unnecessarily difficult and risky proposition. Why build a bomb when there are far cheaper and simpler ways of waging nuclear terror? Analysts have accordingly turned their attention to two other possibilities that, for all their comparative simplicity, would deliver much of the bang of a bomb. Flying a fully fueled jumbo jet into a nuclear reactor is one. The other is using radioactive nuclear materials to kill or sicken people or render tracts of land uninhabitable by, for example, scattering the materials with a conventional explosion.
Nuclear reactors are surrounded by a massive containment structure with concrete-and-steel walls more than a meter thick. These containments were designed to withstand earthquakes and extremely violent impacts, but not the sort a plunging jumbo jet would cause if fully loaded with fuel, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna, Austria. In a 26 September release, the agency suggested that such an impact would not trigger a runaway nuclear reaction, because automatic safety systems would flood the reactor with water. A direct hit by a large, fueled aircraft might nevertheless breach the containment and damage the reactor, possibly causing a leak of radioactive steam and fallout.
Tens of thousands of deaths?
"An attack that would succeed in releasing a plume of radioactive materials, particularly over a nearby city, would dwarf the consequences of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon attacks," said Paul Leventhal, director of the Nuclear Control Institute, the self-described "international atomic safety watchdog" based in Washington, D.C. At a press conference there on 25 September, the institute presented the results of its analysis of such a release of radioactivity: tens of thousands of cancer deaths downwind of the plant.
The IAEA's assessment is much less grisly. It predicts that the worst damage would be confined within 10 km of the plant, and that a Chernobyl-scale disaster is extremely unlikely, given the advantages of modern reactor design and safety systems, which are designed to prevent reactions from spiraling out of control. Even so, dangerous levels of radioactivity would likely persist for 10 to 15 years.
Sharp disagreement with the Nuclear Control Institute's assessment came from Steve Kerekes, director of media relations for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based trade organization. "We would challenge the wild speculation about tens of thousands of deaths even if the containment were to be penetrated," he said in an interview. "The U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation assessed the public health effects of Chernobyl, finding 30 immediate deaths and 1800 cases of thyroid cancer. While that is tragic and inexcusable, thyroid cancer is one of the most treatable. Even that incident did not cause thousands of deaths."
Meanwhile, the Nuclear Control Institute and the Committee to Bridge the Gap, another watchdog group, have provided the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the governmental agency that oversees nuclear licensing and safety in the United States, with a list of proposals to protect nuclear plants from terrorist attacks. These include employing troops to deter attacks from land and water, deployment of advanced anti-aircraft weapons that could deflect or destroy a full-size jetliner, and new background checks of all employees and contractors.
In a brief response to the proposals, commission chairman Richard A. Meserve stated it was "evaluating current requirements and statutory authority relating to acts or threats of terrorism, including but not limited to those that you presented in your letter."