# Could a nuclear power plant be used as a dirty bomb? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 31, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850 "2019-05-31T21:08:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Isosleepy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/isosleepy/32/479_2.png) [@Isosleepy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isosleepy)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850/21 "2019-06-02T20:54:29Z")
Depends too on the required probability of success. If you have 5 van-loads of terrorists, you can attempt lower probability scenarios than if you only had one. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2019, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850/22 "2019-06-02T21:04:08Z")
> [@Qwertol](#): > > I believe nuclear plants are still being built, also “decade old deigns” still sound fairly modern to me, I’m mean they are not computer chips to be updated every year 🙂 In the U.S., at least, we pretty much stopped embarking on building new nuclear plants after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979; the Nuclear Regulatory Commissioned issued no permits for new reactors from 1979 until 2012. While a number of new reactors went online during the 1980s and 1990s, it appears that all of them were projects which had already been approved prior to 1979. The number of U.S. nuclear plants peaked in 1991, at 112; as of 2016, we were down to 100, with four under construction. The last nuclear plant to go online in the U.S. was Watts Bar #2, in Tennessee, which was completed in 2015; construction on that plant had begun in 1973, and that reactor is the only one completed in the U.S. since 1996. Source: [Nuclear power in the United States - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States#Three_Mile_Island_and_after) ---
**Author:** ![joema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9adbd/32.png) [@joema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joema)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850/23 "2019-06-03T10:23:21Z")
> [@Qwertol](#): > > I believe nuclear plants are still being built, also “decade old deigns” still sound fairly modern to me, I’m mean they are not computer chips to be updated every year… > [@kenobi\_65](#): > > In the U.S., at least, we pretty much stopped embarking on building new nuclear plants after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979; the Nuclear Regulatory Commissioned issued no permits for new reactors from 1979 until 2012. While a number of new reactors went online during the 1980s and 1990s, it appears that all of them were projects which had already been approved prior to 1979… Qwertol is correct, many new nuclear plants using new designs are under construction worldwide. Nowhere did the OP specify a US-only scenario. There are 98 operating nuclear plants in the US, but there are 450 now operating worldwide. About 100 new reactors are on order or planned, and 50 are now under construction, some using the latest Gen III+ design: > **[Plans for New Nuclear Reactors Worldwide - World Nuclear Association](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx)** > > Plans for New Nuclear Reactors Worldwide. Information on the growth of global nuclear capacity with a table showing all under construction reactors. > **[Generation III reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Generation_III+_reactors)** > > Generation III reactors, or Gen III reactors, are a class of nuclear reactors designed to succeed Generation II reactors, incorporating evolutionary improvements in design. These include improved fuel technology, higher thermal efficiency, significantly enhanced safety systems (including passive nuclear safety), and standardized designs intended to reduce maintenance and capital costs. They are promoted by the Generation IV International Forum (GIF). > The first Generation III reactors to begin ... The basic issue with traditional civilian reactor designs is they cannot be immediately shut down from a thermal standpoint. After a scram, they will still produce up to 5% of the full thermal output for days. 5% may not sound like much but reactors are only about 33% thermally efficient, IOW for 1 gigawatt electrical, they will produce 3 gigawatts thermal. So for days after a scram shutdown they will be producing 5% \* 3 gigawatts or 150 megawatts of waste heat. That is similar to the heat from 150,000 hair dryers running simultaneously for days. During this period they require active cooling which in turn requires electrical power. Military power reactors using highly enriched uranium do not require this and can be instantly shut down to a low level. However newer Gen III+ designs are not all “passively safe”, and in the OP scenario even a future Gen IV reactor could be compromised given sustained physical access. [http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/new-plants/ap1000-pwr/safety](http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/new-plants/ap1000-pwr/safety) The highly radioactive spent fuel pools are co-located with many current reactors. Those are not in a containment vessel and they also require active cooling. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850/24 "2019-06-03T12:54:21Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > If you had authorized access to the plant, and were able to sneak in explosives - which doesn’t sound hard, there must be pallets of equipment and materials being moved in and out of a nuclear plant on a daily basis - I think an incident similar to Fukishima would be pretty easy to cause. > > Fukishima happened because the following events happened : > > a. Loss of primary power > b. Loss of backup power > c. Delay in restoring a & b > d. Loss of coolant > e. Faulty containment shell > …[plan snipped]… But in that scenario the terrorists would only have caused a through d. That would destroy the plant, but not affect anything outside the plant. I wouldn’t call it a dirty bomb unless radioactive material is spread to unrelated areas. To make it a dirty bomb, they’d have to also destroy the containment shell- multiple feet of reinforced concrete-- which is not something a vanload of people could do in a few minutes. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850/25 "2019-06-03T15:23:40Z")
> [@joema](#): > > Qwertol is correct, many new nuclear plants using new designs are under construction worldwide. Certainly, which is why I prefaced my post with “In the U.S., at least…” ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850/26 "2019-06-04T02:09:28Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > But in that scenario the terrorists would only have caused a through d. That would destroy the plant, but not affect anything outside the plant. I wouldn’t call it a dirty bomb unless radioactive material is spread to unrelated areas. To make it a dirty bomb, they’d have to also destroy the containment shell- multiple feet of reinforced concrete-- which is not something a vanload of people could do in a few minutes. What would make it a dirty bomb is a fault in the containment shell. The reason Fukushima released so much contaminated steam is apparently there are massive holes in the shell, caused by the heat and pressure from the meltdown. There are other reactors operating in the USA with the same faulty design. Analogously, everyone knows RBMK-1000s will explode rather energetically if the conditions are wrong - the post Chernobyl upgrades have probably made them harder to make fail but it’s probably still readily achievable. The control rods on one come up from the bottom… ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850/27 "2019-06-04T14:26:26Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > What would make it a dirty bomb is a fault in the containment shell. The reason Fukushima released so much contaminated steam is apparently there are massive holes in the shell, caused by the heat and pressure from the meltdown. There are other reactors operating in the USA with the same faulty design. So, the plan is: recruit enough people and weapons to win the initial shoot-out with the facility guards and hold off local law enforcement, and a couple engineers who can set charges in the right places, and sacrifice them all (since once bullets start flying at a nuclear facility, there will be such a massive response that there’s not much hope of getting away) in order to wreck one reactor and hope that the containment shell happens to have a fault so you can spread radioactive material over a random area near the reactor, probably not in a way that requires extensive off-site clean-up or remediation. Honestly, if I had those resources I could probably find a better way of using them to create a dirty bomb. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-nuclear-power-plant-be-used-as-a-dirty-bomb/834850.md?page=1)