Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

150Disasters Waiting to Happentheft, and related institutional failures shows a diverse group of actors. Most ofthem breached the security of nuclear facilities for purposes of petty theft or toannoy or embarrass the management. The issue of concern is not so much theacts so far committed– though some of them have caused extensive damage. Agreater concern is how much relative amateurs have been able to accomplishat facilities which are claimed to be subject to stringent security precautions.This suggests that if experienced terrorists decide to mount a serious attack,they can do a great deal more damage than has occurred so far. The increasinginvolvement by terrorists in attacking nuclear facilities, some of whom(notably the Basque group ETA) are believed to have international connections,shows the seriousness of the problem. Further, the review of terroristresources in Chapter seven suggests that very considerable firepower can bebrought to bear on nuclear facilities. Given these two ingredients, it is worthexamining the technical vulnerabilities that might enable terrorist acts (or actsof war) to achieve major releases of radioactivity from nuclear facilities.The potential for reactor sabotageMore than seventy light-water reactors are operable in the United States,many of them clustered at shared sites. A comparable or larger number ofLWRs is under construction. A typical LWR produces about a thousandmegawatts of electricity and operates, on average, slightly over half the time.When operating it contains an enormous amount of radioactivity: over fifteenbillion curies undergoing nearly six billion trillion disintegrations per second. 82The great complexity of such a large reactor arises largely from the manyprotective devices which are supposed to prevent a major release of theradioactive inventory. This is a formidable task, because even after thenuclear chain reaction has been shut down, the radioactivity continues. Itcannot be reduced or controlled in any way. At shutdown the radioactive“decay heat” is six to ten percent of the heat produced at full power–that is,initially hundreds of megawatts. Although that rate slackens, rapidly at first,it remains sufficient for weeks to melt the hundred tons of ceramic (uraniumoxide) fuel unless it is carried away by a special cooling system. The totaldecay heat in that fuel is enough to melt down through a solid iron pillar tenfeet in diameter and seven hundred feet long. 83 Even before overheating fuelmelts, it is heated further by chemical reactions between its metal cladding andwater. Hot fuel also generates steam, hydrogen (which can burn or explode),and carbon dioxide from decomposing concrete, any of which can break openthe heavy concrete containment dome. Just the circulating water in a normallyoperating pressurized-water reactor contains mechanical energy equivalent