Fukushima No. 1 engineer’s warning to Taiwan: Nuclear power unstable

[PamW]

4. Police State is NOT needed

cprise states
At the very least, it would require an unprecedented police state to prevent any hint of dangerous rebellion aimed at the reactors.

The anti-nuclear community has been saying that we need a police state if we have reactors for the last 4 decades.

We have over 100 nuclear power reactors in the USA; and there has never been a need for a police state to prevent an attack on a reactor.

First, the reactors have their own very capable security forces.

Secondly, frankly I don't know what a terrorist would do. All the people who "think" a reactor is a good terrorist target don't know the insides of a reactor plant. The plants are designed so that it would be extremely difficult to cause a meltdown. The Fukushima reactors don't meet USA NRC safety specifications since the Japanese didn't adhere to the GE designs that they licensed. In the wake of Three Mile Island, limits were replaced on the operator controls ( the NRC mandated the limits be removed so operators could over-ride automatic systems ); so that even operators would have difficulty causing problems.

Third, the timescale for meltdowns is days. It takes over a day, and more likely a few to develop a problem, and reinforcements can be summoned in less time than that.

So there's no need for a "police state"; now or in the future with more plants.

It's a "scare tactic" dredged up from the past to scare people into acting / forming opinions without thinking.

The good think about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

PamW