San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant Deemed 'Secure'
Report: Plant Could Withstand An Airliner Crash
POSTED: 7:34 p.m. PST March 28, 2002
UPDATED: 8:04 p.m. PST March 28, 2002
SAN DIEGO -- Despite reports of power plants not being able to withstand an attack like the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, officials at San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant are confident it could withstand a terrorist attack involving an airliner.
Concerns have been renewed this week after a congressional report cited security problems at America's nuclear power plants. New reports claim the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not been forthcoming about the fact that plants like San Onofre were not designed to withstand a plane crash.
In 1987, investigators carried out a test crash into a wall with the same specifications as the containment center of a nuclear power plant. An F-4 jet crashed into the wall at a speed of 500 miles per hour. The plane turned into dust, but the concrete wall was able to withstand the crash. The wall was pushed in just two inches. But that was in 1987 with a small plane. Critics are asking what would happen if an airliner filled with fuel crashed into the power plant today.
"Our engineers since Sept. 11 have conducted analysis. They looked at speed of planes, weight of planes, the amount of fuel in them," San Onofre spokesman Ray Golden said. "We are confident that if a plane intentionally flies into the plant, we would survive with no release of radiation in the atmosphere."
Officials at San Onofre say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has acknowledged all along, that the plants weren't designed for the size and high speeds of today's planes. But a preliminary report shows San Onofre could handle an attack like the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
"We did build plants for a lot of different scenarios, for earthquakes, for terrorism, for natural disasters, and as a result of that the structures that house the pumps are very thick steel reinforced concrete," Golden said.
U.S. Congressman Ed Markey, a long time critic of the nuclear industry, said because so few plants were designed to withstand a plane crash, anti-aircraft weapons should be stationed at all of the nation's nuclear power plants. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission opposes the idea saying there's a big potential for misfires and unintended consequences.
"When you combine the design of the plant, the physical strength of it, redundancy of security system, the way we're screening passengers at airports, what the FAA is going, we think we have the situation at hand," Golden said.
Two comprehensive reports, which will reevaluate the effectiveness of the security of the San Onofre plant, are expected to be completed next spring.
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