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Default OT T Boone Pickens

Jim Yanik wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in
:

dpb wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
dpb wrote:
wrote:
nuke plants have that little problem with waste hazardous for a
million years, and make excellent terrorists targets.
That has yet to be demonstrated...

Uh, while I don't agree that they are particularly excellent
terrorist targets, the lack of demonstration is hardly
reassuring.

That they aren't is pretty much self-evident to anyone who knows
anything about them...there are far easier and more likely to be
useful targets as has been amply demonstrated already.

the used fuel pools are in unhardened steel buildings, a
airliner,
or
small plane into one of those buildings would make thousands of
miles
of land unihabitabe.
...

And how, precisely, do you think this magical event is going to
happen?

We've had this discussion before and your vision of some nuclear
explosion is simply not physically realizable.

He'd not talking about a nuclear explosion, he's talking about
flying
something explosive into the waste retention area, thus
scattering
high level waste over a wide area.

I don't think he can make a credible scenario out of that,
either...


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.


will that plane carry 3000 lbs?


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

will the entire load of Semtex detonate? That's not such an easy
task.


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.

and explosions vent UPwards. The heavy fuel rods will be under
water.
I doubt they would be scattered much,if at all.


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

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


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.

--
--
--John
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(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)


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Default OT T Boone Pickens

In article ,
Jim Yanik wrote:


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?


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.
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Default OT T Boone Pickens

J. Clarke wrote:
....
and explosions vent UPwards. The heavy fuel rods will be under
water.
I doubt they would be scattered much,if at all.


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

....

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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Default OT T Boone Pickens

HeyBub wrote:
wrote:
--



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.


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.


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?

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Default OT T Boone Pickens

On Jul 26, 9:42*am, Jim Yanik wrote:
Red Green wrote :

dpb wrote :


wrote:
On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:32:56 GMT, "JC"
wrote:


. * The last thing we need to do is
turn a beautiful ocean view into an industrial one.


past 12 miles,you can't see the platforms.



The discussion was about windmills, not oil platforms. But in either
case, I have no problem if they are located offshore out of sight of
land.










What about the view from the water?
We don't seem to mind turning the beach into condos and parking lots


Not to mention the 2-legged whales in droves... *


Oh, you mean the "Wal-Mart Babes" as I call them :-)


Or, what's so different to watching a multi-thousand ton ship that is
supposedly "scenic" as compared to a windmill that takes up far less
area--just that it stays still??? *It seems somehow an incongruous
argument to me...


--


oil spills are far more common from tankers than from oil platforms.
the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico did not leak after Katrina.


I agree with that and the point about Katrina is an excellent one,
showing how safe and clean current offshore oil can be.

Regarding the other poster's comment about watching a multi-thousand
ton ship from shore, along just about all of the NJ coast you won't
see those ships anywhere near shore. The shipping channels are
about 12 miles offshore the length of the coast. You generally only
see large container ships, tankers, clearly in the very small areas
where they come into port. On a very clear day, you might catch a
glimpse of them out at 12 miles in the distance, but if you did see
them, it's not a valid analogy to windmills. In the coastal shipping
lanes, a few ships go by an hour. In the case of windmills, we're
talking about farms of thousands of them and potentially only a couple
miles offshore, standing 375 ft high.





--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
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- Show quoted text -


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Default OT T Boone Pickens

dpb wrote:
wrote:
On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:39:27 -0500, dpb 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.

`
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


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.


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.

--
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--John
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Default OT T Boone Pickens

Mastermind wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
dpb wrote:



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.


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.


Who said anything about a Space Shuttle? I was talking about one of
_these_: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Carrier_Aircraft

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?

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


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

--
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Default OT T Boone Pickens

J. Clarke wrote:
dpb wrote:



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.


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.
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J. Clarke wrote:
....
... 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, ...


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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dpb wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
...
... 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, ...


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" ).


I ran into an even worse one once. "If I told _me_ what I worked on
and the results, I'd have to shoot myself". Did show the Powers that
Be a big hole in their security though.

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J. Clarke wrote:
....
I ran into an even worse one once. "If I told _me_ what I worked on
and the results, I'd have to shoot myself". Did show the Powers that
Be a big hole in their security though.


Well, at least the reactor security stuff wasn't nearly as painful to
work with as DOE Q...

--
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dpb wrote:
HeyBub wrote:

....
Windmills require NO maintenance (except to turn the vane so they'll
quit pumping).


Snicker, snort...

You've obviously never tried to keep a bunch of them running on a large
ranch...

....

Took a while to find it on the web, but for the prime example...

Windmills: surviving on the Plains
By DARLA BRACKEN
....
"The XIT Ranch had 325 windmills over its vast 3 million acres and a
special full time crew to take care of them. There were many different
types and designs and hundreds of companies manufacturing them between
the 1880s and into the 1920s and 1930s."

While others weren't as large as the XIT, the fulltime windmill crew was
a common occupation until thru the 30's into the war years on the High
Plains. The manpower shortage during the war really was the beginning
of the emphasis to shift to alternate power sources although it didn't
become terribly prevalent until the 50s and 60s as electric power
distribution lines expanded drastically w/ the advent of the electric
co-op's(1).

It was also dangerous business often, having to climb a tower w/ a
runaway vane after the brakeline had broken being one of most perilous.

....

(1) We were supplied totally by wind until after WWII when in '48 got
REA hookup for the first time. Until then, both windmill and Delco 32V
windcharger system were our water and only electric power on the place.

The windcharger was immediately decommisioned, of course, the windmill
continued until the well casing failed and a new well was drilled in the
mid/late 50s. It, of course, used submergible pump and much larger
capacity.

--
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