DIA: North Korea Planned Attacks on US Nuclear Plants

[happyslug]

22. Containment domes were design to take all but a direct hit by an Atomic Bomb.

One of the reason for such design was the US and the Soviet Union had bombing policies of destroying electrical generation capacity as one of the first thing one destroy. When it come to Nuclear reactors, destruction of the actual Nuclear plant within the dome was NOT needed, just blow away the surrounding distribution system would make the plant useless.

Thus a direct hit on the Containment domes were NOT needed and it fact would require a direct hit that would end up reducing the area affected by the A-bomb. i.e. You would crack the dome, but much more of the distribution system would survive, and such distribution system was always the main target of any such bombing by an Atomic Bomb.

Thus the idea bombing of an Atomic Generation plant was high enough for the maximum blast affect on the surrounding area, even if that meant the dome would survive. Given this attitude, you did NOT have to design the domes for a direct hit, but the over pressure of an blast at 10-20,000 feet above the dome. At that height the Atomic Bomb would do the most damage to the largest area, making the atomic reactor an isolated useless site that would be shut down and NOT used till the area was rebuilt.

As to the domes themselves, domes are the strongest buildings for all pressure is spread out to its base along its curve walls. The domes are also smooth, so there is nothing to catch the pressure from moving onward down the sloped wall and onto the surrounding land. Domes have been used to store high explosives for centuries do to this inherent strength. It was an easy switch to adopt them for nuclear power plants and with modern steel reinforced concrete can be made quite strong. Most were designed to take a blast from INSIDE the containment dome, but to take such a blast requires a much stronger dome then one designed to take a hit from the outside. Thus the domes were extremely strong and in many people's eyes not destroyable except by a direct hit by an atomic bomb AND that was NOT that likely given the accuracy of missiles till the 1980s.

In the 1980s it became more and more possible to hit something like a containment dome from clear across the world, but by then the question of why one would do so given that it would reduce the destruction in the area of the power plant.

Thus a nuclear containment dome can take a direct hit by a Plane for it is a dome and domes spread out the effect of any hit. Square boxes, like the World Trade Center, do NOT spread out the effect of the hit AND unlike domes, do NOT let fuel flow away form the impact cite. The World Trade Center had a center corridor with flat concrete slabs on each floor. There is some reports that the floors had a slight curve upward for it was better to err upward then downward during construction. i.e. to be safe you design each floor with one or two inches upward cant, so that when the building "Settled" each floor would still be flat as oppose to some floors with a slight tilt downward (and the impression such a tilt would do to officer workers as they see any water flowing to the windows as opposed to the Center Elevators).

Sorry, everything turns to fuel causing the Towers to collapse and the flat floors kept that fuel on each floor till it was burned OR the floor collapsed.

Domes, Circles and Triangles are stronger then Squares, but Squares are easier to design and build. Thus buildings are squares and thus weaker then Containment domes if everything else is the same.