New nuclear reactors planned to be built across Europe are not designed to withstand a 9/11-style aircraft attack by terrorists, a leaked report has revealed.
The European pressurised water reactor (EPR) is capable of resisting an accidental crash by a five-tonne military fighter, says the French nuclear power company, EDF. But only by extrapolation does it argue that the reactor will also withstand the impact of a 250-tonne commercial airliner flown deliberately into it.
This assumption, according to independent nuclear engineer, John Large, is 鈥渆ntirely unjustified鈥�. This 鈥渞eflects what seems to be an almost total lack of preparation to defend against the inevitability of terrorist attack,鈥� he says.
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Europe鈥檚 first EPR, seen by the nuclear industry as the forerunner of a new generation of nuclear power plants, is under construction at Olkiluoto in Finland. It is the most likely type of reactor to be built in the UK, now that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has put nuclear power 鈥渂ack on the agenda with a vengeance鈥�.
The leaked document is a 2003 report from a senior EDF official, Bruno Lescoeur, to the French nuclear safety regulator, IRSN. It attempts to show that the post-9/11 risks of planes crashing into an EPR are low.
Act of war
Because the reactors are designed to withstand a military jet crash, the report contends, they will also withstand the hardest parts of a passenger airline 鈥� its engines. It also claims that terrorists would have difficulty steering an aircraft towards a reactor at a low enough angle.
But EDF does not give any absolute guarantees. 鈥淓DF does not envisage assuring a capacity to resist every act of war or every foreseeable act of terrorism,鈥� writes Lescoeur. 鈥淭he hypotheses relating to an impact must cover a 鈥榬easonable risk鈥�, and cannot pretend to include all the possibilities.鈥�
EDF鈥檚 assessment is dismissed as 鈥渆xtremely inadequate鈥� by Large, who was commissioned by the environmental campaign group Greenpeace to evaluate the leaked report. He points out that the newly released footage of the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11 showed that trained terrorists could fly low and on target.
A similar attack on a reactor would cause 鈥渁 total calamity鈥�, with the release of large amounts of radioactivity, Large claims. The only way to protect the reactors would be to cover them with a specially hardened concrete superstructure, or to build them underground.
The leaking of the document has provoked a fierce controversy in France, one of the world鈥檚 biggest users of nuclear electricity. A French anti-nuclear activist, Stephane Lhomme of Sortir du Nucl茅aire, was detained by police for 14 hours on 16 May in connection with the leaked report.
The French green movement responded by distributing the document as widely as possible, making it available on a dozen websites. So far, EDF has declined to comment.