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

158Disasters Waiting to Happenin American plutonium-handling plants. In the first, Gulf United Nuclear’s plutoniumfacility, a mixed-oxide fuel fabrication plant at West Pawling, New York,suffered in 1972 a fire and two explosions of unspecified origin; these scatteredan undetermined amount of plutonium around the facility, which was then permanentlyshut down. 122 In the second and third, the Rocky Flats plant, whichmakes plutonium bomb components fifteen miles upwind of central Denver, sufferedtwo major fires. 123 One in 1957 released at least pounds and possibly hundredsof pounds of plutonium oxide dust. The second, in 1969, appears to havebeen the costliest industrial accident in U.S. history. General Giller, then theAtomic Energy Commission’s Director of Military Applications, testified inCongressional hearings that the 1969 fire was “a near catastrophe” and that“hundreds of square miles” could have been contaminated if the fire had burnedthrough the roof. “If the fire had been a little bigger,” he said, “it is questionablewhether it could be been contained.” 124 The plant probably contained tons of plutonium.The quantity of plutonium known to cause lung cancer if inhaled intothe lung, is much less than a millionth of an ounce. Any facility containing largeamounts of plutonium is thus a tempting target for terrorists. Once contaminatedby a release, the plant would be very hard to maintain and clean up: deadlyplutonium dust could blow around for millennia.Military attacks on nuclear facilitiesUntil 1980, nobody had seriously considered the problem of power reactorsin wartime. 125 Yet wars are almost ubiquitous. Since World War II, overone hundred fifty armed conflicts have involved more than twenty-five millionpeople. 126 In 1981 alone, thirty-seven armed conflicts were underway,involving more than eight million uniformed people. With nuclear facilities inmore than a hundred countries and power reactors operating in more thantwo dozen countries, it is not surprising that a few countries operating powerreactors have had wars on their territory–India, for example. Fortunately,none of these wars has yet involved the reactors. (In Vietnam, the quartermegawattresearch reactor at Dalat was hastily dismantled by retreatingAmerican troops, lest its radioactive core be released. Its fuel, only twentypercent enriched, was too dilute to be directly used for bombs.) 127If attack threatened, would a country shut down all its power reactors–somewhatreducing vulnerability to attack by reducing the decay heat, but at theexpense of power supplies? Swedish officials plan to do this, and therefore privatelysay that during Sweden’s interim use of nuclear power (which Parliamenthas said must end by 2010) the nuclear share of total capacity should not exceedtwenty-five percent–as opposed to the eighty-plus percent sought by France.However, a Finnish nuclear expert said of his own country’s plans that “in a state