San Onofre isn't jetliner-proof, either

September 18, 2001

By CHRIS KNAP
The Orange County Register


SAN ONOFRE California's nuclear-power plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are some of the strongest in the nation -- built with extra concrete and steel to withstand seismic tremors.

Protected by miles of fences, automatic weapons and their own security forces, the plant operators are confident that they can repel almost any invader -- unless they are descending from the sky in a 200-ton jet airplane.

"I am confident in saying that San Onofre's containment buildings are the strongest structures in all of Southern California,'' said Ray Golden, San Onofre business manager for Southern California Edison.

"They are designed to withstand earthquakes, floods and mudslides. But they are not designed to protect against the type of aircraft used in last week's terrorist attacks.''

That said, Edison's nuclear engineers want people to realize that a jet crashing into one of the reactors at San Onofre or Diablo Canyon on the Central Coast would not result in a nuclear explosion.

The fuel inside the 8-inch-thick carbon-steel reactor is highly radioactive -- but not unstable enough to explode.

Should a terrorist jet crash through the 4-foot-thick walls of the containment dome, the 8-inch reactor crack open, and all of the plant's emergency cooling water systems fail, radioactivity might well leak into the atmosphere, endangering the health of any residents downwind.

"We would characterize (the terrorist attacks) as President Bush did -- an act of war,'' Golden said.

"We are not certain what could happen to the plant from that type of event, and we cannot protect completely against it. Nor, from a security standpoint, are we required to.''

     
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Copyright 2001 - The Orange County Register