Fukushima Meltdown Could Be A Template For Nuclear Terrorism On US Soil

http://www.emfnews.org

06/14/2011

Given the revolutions of past and present, class warfare and the scheming of those seeking power, the human race has shown a remarkable resilience and has managed to survive thus far. The new factors in the equation of the balance of mankind and the rest of nature are the technological advances that have changed how political and social chaos can develop and the advances in industry that have the potential to inflict serious environmental consequences. Threats of nuclear war and biological catastrophe now bring into question how humanity should best guard its future.

In this regard, the question is not if, but when a nuclear terrorist attack will happen on US soil. How can we forestall these likely events?

A part of the answer can be found in al Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahab, a video released earlier this month. The first 36 minutes of the video essentially are a history lesson of militants who heard the call to jihad and then acted on it. Among the examples are individuals such as ElSayyid Nosair, the assassin of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane; Abdel Basit (also known as Ramzi Yousef), the operational planner of the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the thwarted Bojinka plot; Mohammed Bouyeri, the assassin of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh; and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. Others include the leader of the team of assassins who killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the militants behind the Mumbai attacks.

Then, after listing those examples, the video emphasizes the point that if one is to live in the “real Islamic way,” one must also follow the examples of the men profiled. Furthermore, since the “enemies of Islam” have expanded their “attacks against Islam” in many different places, the video asserts that it is not only in the land of the Muslims that the enemies of Islam must be attacked, but also in their homelands (i.e., the West).
In fact, the video asserts that it is easy to strike the enemies of Islam in their home countries and doing so creates the biggest impact. And this is the context in which Gadahn made his widely publicized comment about Muslims buying guns and conducting armed assaults.

While most of the western intelligence and military agencies are focusing their budgets and energy on combating the traffic of nuclear material, it also confirms that Fukushima demonstrated an acute vulnerability that could be exploited at active US reactor sites.

According to US intelligence reports, after 9/11, terrorist organizations operatives were reported to have conducted reconnaissance of US nuclear reactor facilities. Additionally, we all remember the more recent cyber attacks and espionage incidents on the International Monetary Fund (“IMF”), Lockheed Martin, Sony and, ultimately, the Iranian nuclear facilities. We may never know for sure if the Stuxnet worm implanted in the Iranian reactors was written by an entity friendly or hostile to the US, but we do know that it was effective and that it made it clear that attacks in cyberspace have effects in the real world.

The Fukushima meltdown showed how current nuclear plants are vulnerable to cooling-system failures. This might be of interest to Al Qaeda as a strategy of attacking plants in US (don’t worry, this is not a national secret- both sides are well aware of the unthinkable potential). Pools of circulating water that cool spent fuel could be an attractive target for terrorists. Cooling systems that circulate water around a sun-like core are also highly vulnerable. At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the spent-fuel pool belonging to its No. 4 reactor lost power to its cooling system, resulting in the water boiling off and a spent-fuel fire that released radiation directly into the atmosphere.

At least 28 reactors in the US have designs similar to the Fukushima plant, where water-cooled spent-fuel pools are sheltered only by a containment building and not surrounded by a containment vessel. Such pools, when loaded with spent fuel, are safe as long as their cooling systems are working.

But US spent-fuel pools tend to be far more heavily loaded than those in Japan. Today, some 65,000 metric tons of spent fuel is stored at reactor sites around the country and 75 percent of it in US spent-fuel pools, according to data from the Nuclear Energy Institute (as cited in a recent report by the non-partisan Institute for Policy Studies).

Some 30 million such rods are stored in spent-fuel pools at 51 sites around the country that contain some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.

The rods are usually kept in tightly packed racks submerged in pool water, which requires a steady flow of electricity to keep water circulating and the rods from overheating. If water drains from a spent-fuel pool, it can lead to a catastrophic fire that emits dangerous radioactive elements such as Cesium 137. Even so, the US does not mandate backup power for cooling systems to the pools as nuclear power watchdogs have noted in several recent studies.

The Fukushima disaster’s dramatic demonstration of how nuclear plants are vulnerable to cooling-system failure could “awaken terrorist interest” in attacking such plants.

Following the same concept of the Stuxnet virus, terrorists will most likely try to damage a reactor’s support and water-supply systems, as well as its control and protection system, to cause a heat explosion of the reactor with subsequent demolition of the reactor and the building in which it is located.

According to experts in system vulnerability, the major cyber-threats are coming through both internal and external communication channels. The internal channel can be comprised of disgruntled employees with remote access seeking revenge or perhaps staff who recklessly shares access data with political activists or criminals. Many attacks are now arriving via external channels such as the Internet.

Here is the threat – specialized IT equipment that is mated to control equipment at point of manufacture – compressors, cooling units, remote control valves, electric generators – are being pinged by hackers and, in some cases, tampered with. Foreign or domestic terrorists can employ the same knowledge as hackers and, as we saw with the Russian cyber-assault on Estonia, an entire country can live in misery for weeks before the intruders are diagnosed and defeated.

Just imagine a nuclear power plant that has suffered a cyber-attack and the controls of its cooling systems are being operated remotely by terrorists thousands of miles away. Imagine a plant that has been attacked by a virus and the cooling controls have been pre-programmed to cease cooling at a specific time. In these cases, just “pulling the plug” and turning off electrical service makes the problem worse.
Many countries around the world are re-evaluating the security of their nuclear facilities. Some countries may conclude that the facilities are secure but the systematic access is not. How many countries may conclude that the risk is just too great? How many countries are making choices right now?

Now add to this the possibility of highly sensitive yet carelessly protected information becoming available to our enemies? Names, titles and personal family records of nuclear facility employees…designated escape routes for evacuation areas…control of utilities outside of the nuclear facility…every frail access point is being tested and poked and prodded by people who mean us harm on a daily basis.

The only way to deal with these types of threats at home is to acknowledge the risk and to redirect a part of the budget allocated to the war on terror to this mission. A coordinated attack on our nuclear power plants would require sophistication yet very little cost making it a nearly perfect terrorist target.
Too often there are more barbarians at the gate than there are sentries.

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