Indian Point

Nuclear Power reactor near NYC.

Worrying article by MattBivens re Dealing With Terrorism.

• Conducted by General Electric, a leading builder of nuclear plants, and published in 1974 in the industry journal Nuclear Safety, it looked at accidents, not terror attacks. It concluded that were a "heavy" airliner to hit a reactor building in the right place, it would almost certainly rip it apart. It would also most likely damage the reactor core and both the cooling and emergency cooling systems. The G.E. study defined a "heavy" plane as one weighing more than six tons. The 757 deployed against the Pentagon weighed over 100 tons. A 767, fully loaded, could weigh more than 200 tons.

• Last September, Foster Zeh decided to do something about it. His boss had tapped him to lead an NRC exercise: Zeh was to be a one-man terrorist assault team. But, Zeh says, his supervisor also told him to "have a bad day," so the plant could pass. Indignant, Zeh set out to give Indian Point a wake-up call. The war-game part of the drill was played with magnetic pieces moving across a wall-mounted map of the plant. In Zeh's account, he moved his attacking-terrorist magnet rapidly into position to go after the weakest link: the spent-fuel pool. While an NRC inspector with a clipboard tracked his rapid progress, his boss visibly fretted before finally calling an unusual time-out. He dragged Zeh out into the hall and told him to "shut the fuck up." Zeh was replaced at the table. The terrorists lost the game, and Indian Point passed its NRC exam. Several weeks later, Zeh was put on administrative leave. Hmm, this sounds like 2002-09-12-b.

River Keeper wants to shut down Indian Point. http://www.riverkeeper.org/campaign.php/indian_point