Another Reason Nuclear Power Is Risky...

The headline in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune read:

Fired power plant worker arrested with explosives, ammunition

Contract employee at a nuclear power plant faces 4 terroristic threat counts.

It's sensational and misleading, to be sure: the worker wasn't targeting the nuclear power plant. He was targeting the local union rep:

Johnson told police he was upset with paying $3,500 a year for the union’s representation and that there would be trouble at the union’s meeting. He also denied that he planned to shoot anyone or threatened anyone.

But it does point out another serious problem with nuclear power.

Remember the Germanwings pilot a couple of months back who committed suicide by crashing his plane into a mountain? Suppose he had aimed his plane at a skyscraper in Düsseldorf instead of a mountain in France. It could have been Germany's 9/11, killing thousands instead of just (!) 150 passengers and crew.

Last fall a despondent FAA contractor set fire to the FAA radar facility in Aurora, Illinois, in a failed suicide attempt. The fire ground the air traffic control system to a halt (the contractor is expected to plead guilty).

Now, suppose the angry contract worker at the Monticello nuclear plant had completely lost it, but instead of  focusing his ire on the union, he decided to end it all by blowing up the nuclear containment at the plant, or the dry casks where the spent fuel is stored. They say the containment and those casks are strong enough to take a direct hit from an airplane. But how about a shaped charge planted by a deranged technician who has access to the guts of the plant?

This is the problem with nuclear power, and any technology that concentrates a huge amount of energy in a single location. How can we be sure that there are sufficient safeguards at our nuclear facilities to prevent a single disgruntled or suicidal employee from wreaking major havoc? We know right now that our aircraft are vulnerable to lone wolf attacks from the inside. By putting impenetrable doors on the cockpit to stop terrorists, we made it easier for suicidal pilots to kill hundreds.

Obviously it's not just planes and nuclear power plants that are vulnerable to insider attacks: are the nuclear and conventional explosives on Air Force bombers safe from suicidal pilots who might commandeer the aircraft and fire on an American city? Could our hydroelectric dams be blown up by nut jobs from the inside? The Johnstown flood killed 2,200 people when the dam broke after several days of rain. How many of our cities are sitting below large reservoirs?

Lots of people are worried about terrorists attacking our critical infrastructure, blowing up refineries, oil depots, chemical plants, etc., but very little has been done to mitigate these risks. Partly that's because the United States has had relatively few terrorist attacks in the last decade, and we've put it on the back burner. But we've had a slew of psycho suicidal whack jobs who have shot up movie theaters, malls, schools and so on.

By focusing on terrorist threats, are we missing a much greater danger from suicidal insiders? How sure are we that our nuclear power plants are safe from angry, unstable, underpaid contractor workers who are trusted to monitor the safety of the facility?

To quote the comics, Who watches the watchmen?