> And now you have just cut a hole into a nuclear reactor that is ON and killed yourself (or triggered a whole bunch of safety features stopping the nuclear reaction and maybe not kill the attacker but for sure notified the authorities)
So somebody can strap a bunch of explosives to it and cause a good bit of quite radioactive material to spill (I don't mean a chain reaction, just the normal radioactive waste). You don't need to steal it if your goal is to have a dirty bomb.
That's certainly a concern - but if we're stipulating people with huge amounts of explosives and ill-will, they can probably also do a lot of damage without the nuclear reactor anyway.
The spill is contained within the containment facility. I guess they could use enough explosives to also breach the containment facility. But if they're capable of that, they probably have the means to do even more damage by targeting a skyscraper. Multiple orders of magnitude more people died in 9/11 than in Fukushima.
Right there's no huge containment facility, but there's still a concrete dome over the reactor isn't there?
I'm still not seeing how our hypothetical terrorist A-team inflicts more damage by attacking a microreactor versus attacking a populated area directly.
> Right there's no huge containment facility, but there's still a concrete dome over the reactor isn't there?
I'm pretty sure these aren't intended to be used with a concrete dome or anything as substantial as that. Look at the pictures in the article, and some of the referenced benefits:
Can be used for emergency response to help restore power to areas hit by natural disasters
- "Can be quickly removed from sites and exchanged for new ones"
- "Can be used for emergency response to help restore power to areas hit by natural disasters"
That doesn't really mesh with needing to build a concrete dome on site.
Regardless, the point remains: the question that needs to be asked isn't "are these sites vulnerable to attack" it's "can an attacker inflict more damage here than through conventional means?"
So somebody can strap a bunch of explosives to it and cause a good bit of quite radioactive material to spill (I don't mean a chain reaction, just the normal radioactive waste). You don't need to steal it if your goal is to have a dirty bomb.