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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!seismo!hao!rew
From: rew@hao.UUCP (Russell K. Rew)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: re: Old King Coal
Message-ID: <926@hao.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Apr-84 09:16:41 EST
Article-I.D.: hao.926
Posted: Thu Apr 19 09:16:41 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Apr-84 06:59:09 EST
References: <129@oliven.UUCP>
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 25


 >The odds of a nuclear power plant being hit by an H-bmb are irrelevant.  The
 >worst thing that could happen were the plant to be hit by an H-bomb would be a
 >fission explosion.  Seeing as a fusion bomb, which is triggered by a fission
 >exlosion, has just occurred, the possible fission boom and radiation leakage
 >will be the least of our worries.

Wrong.  Aside from the fact that there could be no fission explosion
from such an event, the after effects would be far worse than either
the fusion explosion by itself or any conceivable nuclear reactor
accident.  According to a Scientific American article on various
catastrophic releases of radioactivity (Fetter and Tsipis, 1981), a
typical detonation of a nuclear weapon on one nuclear reactor would
result in an area of 25,000 square miles in which the dose would remain
lethal for a year, which is 20 times larger than the lethal zone
created by the detonation of the weapon alone.  Furthermore, the lethal
zone would remain lethal much longer because of the long-lived isotopes
released in a hit on a reactor.  "Vaporizing the cores of nuclear reactors
with nuclear weapons is clearly an efficient way to desolate large parts
of a nation."
-- 

                                                    Russ Rew

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