Skip to main content

Texas A&M Takes on ABC News Report

Texas A&M University is taking issue with a number of assertions ABC News made in their report on the visit to the school's Nuclear Science Center (NSC):
Dan Reece, the director of the NSC, said there were many false accusations in ABC's report.

"You'll notice that they did not show any unlocked doors or backpacks at A&M," Reece said.

"We are allowed to give tours to the public by the federal government, and visitors are allowed to use cameras."

Reece said if small explosions were put into the reactor pool, the explosion would make a mess inside the NSC but do nothing beyond that. He said the walls of the pool are made of 5-foot-thick cement.

"If that happened, I might not have a very pretty place to work the next day, but the health and safety of the public and students are our main concern," he said.

"Primetime" reported that the reactor on A&M's campus is running on highly-enriched uranium or weapons-grade material, which is 90 percent enriched uranium; however, according to a fact sheet issued by the University, the fuel on which A&M's reactor runs is 60-percent enriched uranium.

The NSC is in the process of converting the fuel to 20-percent enriched uranium, according to the fact sheet.

Leslie Braby, an A&M nuclear engineering professor, said it would be extremely difficult to steal the fuel or create a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb is a weapon made of conventional explosives, such as dynamite, and radioactive material, which scatters radiation and contamination in the air, he said.

"Even if there were 12 people willing to use a suicide attack on (the reactor), there still wouldn't be enough time to do it before the police would respond," Braby said.

Braby said the reactor is located underneath 30 feet of water and that to get to the fuel would take a very long time.
More later from other schools. If you're reading, and you're at one of the institutions smeared by this report, please send your info our way.

Technorati tags: , , , ,

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should