OT T Boone Pickens

[J. Clarke]

Terrorists buy/rent/borrow/steal, say, a Cessna Caravan, load it up with a ton and a half of Semtex, and fly it into the building.

[trader4]

When did I ever say I thought you had to have windmills on the plains? Maybe you can't read and have me confused with Pickens.

[dpb]

I can't tell _what_ you think, specifically on that particular subject

-- you say one thing then the other attitude creeps back in it appears in a followup...

In reality, I wasn't speaking so much directly at you as trying to emphasize the point that there are views of open expanse out here in what most consider the nearly deserted middle and that it seems ok to most in populated areas (including Topeka and Kansas City) that those areas get visually polluted while somehow the seacoast or mountain retreat or whatever of the complainers are somehow sacrosanct. Meanwhile, of course, those same people are often among the most profligate users of the very power they want delivered to them w/o their having any burden.

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[Jim Yanik]

"J. Clarke" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

will that plane carry 3000 lbs? will the entire load of Semtex detonate? That's not such an easy task. and explosions vent UPwards. The heavy fuel rods will be under water. I doubt they would be scattered much,if at all.

and where does one FIND Semtex,a Czech explosive,in the US?

[J. Clarke]

It will carry 4,000 plus a pilot and fuel for 100 miles or so with a

45 minute reserve.

I'm sure that the instructors at the Al Quaeda Terrorist Academy are up to the task of teaching their people how to do that.

So how many lives are you willing to stake on that doubt?

Geez, do you have Asperger's syndrome or some such? For "Semtex" substitute any other suitable explosive--I'm sure that the Al Quaeda Terrorist Academy provides its graduates with a long list of suitable materials plus the knowledge to improvise if needed.

[Kurt Ullman]

Technically any explosive including good ole dynamite would do the trick at 3K lbs. This is less in tonnage than Controlled Demolition and similar companies use to pancake buildings, so getting it all to detonate when it is packed that tightly isn't all that hard. I'd have to look over my old notes from the 70s, but IIRC once semtex (or C-4 for that matter) is started, that much go pretty much sympathetic with block one being initiated by a blasting cap, block 2 initiated by block 1, etc. However, as I mentioned, it has been about 30 years since I had a reason to look that stuff up... Explosions pretty much go in every direction. But, like me, it tends to concentrate in the path least resistance. Thus the theory behind shaped charges, but the math and engineering of doing that in this case is beyond my meager skills. Shaped charges also need to specifically placed to get the best bang for the buck (so to speak) and that would be almost impossible in this case. However, as with much of the terrorism threats, we are overthinking this scenario. From the T's viewpoint, getting in there and blowing up anything with the name nuclear before it is enough. As was noted by that great sage and noted philosopher Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: "The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize." They don't have to get it exactly right to achieve their goals.

[gfretwell]

Actually, 3000 pounds would just be a waste of explosives. A properly shaped 100 pound charge would shoot the engine block through the containment vessel like a bullet. These days, with a GPS autopilot, you don't even need anyone in the plane.

[dpb]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

I seriously doubt it would do more than make a decent hole; I think the chances of it penetrating are minimal at best and "like a bullet" are like slim and none and Slim left town.

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[dpb]

J. Clarke wrote: ...

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It's the problem hallerb has w/ his exaggerated proposed scenario--it just isn't a reasonable physical conclusion to what would happen given the initiating event.

Certainly not the "thousands of miles" idea--it would surely make a mess of the building, some of the support structure and perhaps scatter a few fission products around the site, but doing much more than that would be really, really tough to get to happen. Nothing nuclear is even physically possible; nothing thermal is beyond remote. Loss of shielding directly over the storage pool would require simply staying away w/o proper protection if the water pool were lowered.

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[HeyBub]

How's this for a plan: A federal regulation that says 90% of the power consumed within a state must be generated within the state (or within 24 miles of the state's coastline). If, for whatever reason (worry about pollution, esthetics, hazard to navigation, etc.) a state is unable to be self-sufficient, it can cut back its usage.

In the alternative, a federal tax on all electric power that crosses a state line, say, three-cents per kwh.

I'm in a state that produces about 105% of it's domestic needs (we sell a little bit to Mexico and Oklahoma). In fact, the city in which I live (8 million people in the metropolitan area) has no zoning. If someone wanted to build a power plant next door to me, well, that's okay.

As you might guess, I don't have much sympathy for those who screech NIMBY.

[J. Clarke]

So let's see, we have a state with huge amounts of hydropower and little population so we discourage them from selling their excess power to the adjacent states with large populations and little hydropower, instead encouraging those states to build their own, dirtier power plants. Now, remind me, what was the benefit of your plan supposed to be?

[gfretwell]

` It would certainly make a decent sized hole and "bullet" doesn't even describe the effect of a well designed shaped charge.

take a look at anti tank rounds on google

[Kurt Ullman]

Which are placed in specific places to fairly high tolerances which would be impossible in the scenario of a plane going into the building. Putting it all in the plane in the first place pretty well rules out the ability to shape it correctly.

[dpb]

Which don't look anything at all like an engine block as a projectile. Nor does the containment building look like tank armor so results aren't particularly similar.

It's difficult to factually discuss much of reactor protection since scenarios and all are restricted data. Consequently simply can't say much more specifically about what has been looked at other than a significant amount of work has been done to quantify risk and vulnerabilities in order to deal with contingencies.

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[gfretwell]

The anti tank round shoots a slug of copper but if you had a shaped charge behind that engine it would go for a ride.

[Kurt Ullman]

But where? This is hardly a smart bomb in design. Also, the copper slug behaves much differently physically, aerodynamically, etc., from the engine and that would make a difference. As was mentioned, anti tank rounds can be aimed, the engine block really can't even if "ejected" by a shaped charge.

[J. Clarke]

An engine block won't do it. A whole effing jet fighter won't do it (that's been tested with a similar structure). A geezly 707 hitting flat out won't do it (that was the design criterion when the original standards were set, and I'm sure the margins were very large). What a shaped charge will do is another story, but rigging a shaped charge in kamikaze could be difficult--you'd need to do a good deal of reengineering on the plane I think to get the explosive charge into the right place and still have somewhere for the pilot to sit.

Now, if you want a _nasty_ scenario consider some group stealing one of Virgin Galactic's White Knights and putting a shaped charge on it in place of the SpaceShip. That gives them 30 tons of payload on a fully aerobatic airframe and pretty much complete freedom on the design.

But stealing one of NASA's Shuttle transporters and mounting the bomb in place of the Shuttle could do even worse--that could give them 75 tons of explosives.

The trouble with both those scenarios though is that they have to steal a very high profile aircraft and then hide it somewhere (in an unusually tall and rather larger hangar) while they mount the bomb.

Probably be just as easy to just steal a B-52 and a load of bunker-busters to begin with.

[J. Clarke]

Who said anything about a Space Shuttle? I was talking about one of _these_:

As to how to "snag one", you walk on, start the engines, and fly off, same as you steal any other airplane. It's probably best to not steal it while there's a Space Shuttle on top.

And I stated specifically that hiding it was going to be a problem, so why are you asking me where to hide it?

What "cargo bay in the back"? The transporter's "cargo bay" isn't any different from the cargo bay in any other 747.

[Mastermind]

Share some of your thoughts with us on how to snag a space shuttle and where to hide it. I think you may be on to something if it weren't for a few minor details.

That cargo bay in the back would be a kick ass place to store explosives.

[dpb]

J. Clarke wrote: ...

The original analyses of containment, etc. are, of course, in the FSAR and there's much available in the NRC dockets on those. They're interesting but marginally relevant to other specific terrorist threats. The work specifically in that area is treated mostly as restricted data for obvious reasons and so isn't readily available (the old saw "if I told you what we worked on and the results, I'd have to shoot you" :) ).

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