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Fighting Back With Online Video

Back in January, we told you about a ridiculous video created by Greenpeace U.K. of an airliner crashing into a seaside nuclear power plant while a terrified family looks on (watch it here). More recently, I discovered a video by the Committee to Bridge the Gap on the same topic narrated by noted corporate security expert, Martin Sheen (he's like a bad penny).

Both videos leverage services from an online service called YouTube, a Web site that allows members to upload video for free. In turn, the videos can either be viewed over at YouTube, or alternately, embedded in your own Website inside a video player (we used it here). It's a great service, and one that NEI's members ought to be using to get their message out to a wider audience.

So, in the interest of equal time, NEI recently uploaded our own nuclear security video over at a competing service, Google Video. Watch it right now:



And while our narrator isn't a television actor, we like to think he's a little better informed. We've got about 10 other videos uploaded, and we'll be featuring them all in the ensuing weeks and months. And if you have an industry-related video you'd like to share, send it my way, and we'll feature it at NEI Nuclear Notes.

POSTSCRIPT: One last item: Both YouTube and Google Video are great tools, and we intend to use them both. You should too.

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Comments

Rod Adams said…
Thank you for sharing the video.

It tells an important story, but it might not be too reassuring to certain members of the population.

The question "If it takes so much effort to protect the plants, is it worth it?' will certainly be asked, especially in the financial community.

The increased cost of the additional security measures also adds just one more disadvantage for nuclear power in a competitive energy market. The notion that nuclear plants require large buffer areas will make it very difficult to build any new university research reactors, something that is going to be necessary if the industry is to expand as currently predicted.

In many ways it appears to me that the industry has allowed the opposition to set the agenda.

Though I do not expect much agreement on this point, please think about the direct financial reward that a "terrorist threat" against nuclear plants provides to oil producers and then think about the source of funding for certain terrorist organizations.

The threat does not even have to be real - all it takes is producing some scraps of paper and leaving them behind in a strategically selected cave in a forsaken corner of the world. Game theory is often better understood by strategists outside of the United States.

As the video stated, nuclear plants were already some of the least vulnerable installations in the country BEFORE we spent an additional billion dollars on increased security measures and added a rather significant on-going annual cost through the increased guard force. I do not want to take anything away from the professionalism of the force, but once hired it will be difficult to reduce its size anytime in the future.

I would have preferred for those people to have found good jobs in construction and operation of new nuclear plants. The training received in those jobs is productive rather than defensive and is extensible to a lot of other production enterprises.
Anonymous said…
another working lunch break and a not even a very entertaining video..

Why would you say that it is the opposition that sets the agenda and not legitimate security concerns?

Is Congressman Christopher Shay (R/CT) "opposition" just because he has security concerns arising out of the continued cozy relationship of the Commission and NEI's business as usual?

Again, this NEI promotional ad still fails to come to grips reality---the Design Basis Threat (past, present and proposed)maintains, exercises and evaluates site security forces to repel or hold off a small fraction of an adversary force already successfully mobilized on September 11th (19 highly trained, knowledgable and suicidal men in four coordinated teams).

Why is that? Do you think it is unrealistic or overly speculative to contemplate that an adversary bent on causing mass causualities, large population dislocations and extreme long-term economic dislocation would contemplate attacking a nuclear facility with a force as large or larger than September 11th?

Then again, they came by hijacked aircraft and no such provisions to repel or protect against such an attack are currently considered at nuclear facilities.

With regard to NEI's trivalization of this continued vulnerability to aircraft attack, even taking 100%effectiveness credit with sky marshalls, cockpit door fortifications and increased passenger screening at airports for protection of commercial passenger aircraft, the revised DBT (supposedly upgraded) still doesn't account for expolsive laden private aircraft or general aviation aircraft that can be used for attacking nuclear power stations. Site Emergency Actuation Levels do not contemplate a 30 minute warning of the approach of such aircraft, so I dont take any comfort that an armed air cavalary will arrive in time.

There is also the water borne attack and if you look around most nuclear power stations you will also not see even at minimum marine exclusion devices protecting cooling intake structures as are now typically deployed around anchored US naval war vessels. What are you thinking?

You guys should stop blaming a growing number of messengers and get with the message.

For example consider that the State of New Jersey's Bureau of Nuclear Engineering in the Department of Environmentl Protection is appealing a licensing board denial of its contention regarding the vulnerability of the GE Mark I elevated storage pond in the Oyster Creek license renewal application. Its actually a very good legal brief. These folks are not "antinuclear extremists" as NEI so often likes to label critics in attempts to avoid answering the hard questions.

Does the industry and NRC have to be dragged into federal court before heeding engineering analyses showing that a private aircraft carrying even a modest amount of high explosive in shaped charges directed into a Mark I reactor building and its sitting duck in a pond of 500 metric tons of high level nuclear waste at 100 feet above grade could take out much of the the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard?

geez, back to work,
Paul, NIRS
Rod Adams said…
Paul:

I am confident that the security forces at nuclear power plants can succeed against a force of 19 (or 190, or even 1900) coordinated, trained, motivated people armed with box cutters. Any attempt that they would make would certainly qualify as suicidal.

Rod
Anonymous said…
The National Academies of Science weighed in on this issue in 2005: “Spent fuel storage facilities cannot be dismissed as targets for [terrorist] attacks…” (“Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report”, Finding 2A) “The committee finds that, under some conditions, a terrorist attack that partially or completely drained a spent fuel pool could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and the release of large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment.” (Finding 3B)
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission apparently disagrees with Paul Primavera about the potential scope of such a disaster. The 1997 done for NRC study estimated the consequences of a spent fuel fire resulting in the release of 8-80 million curies of Cesium-137 (sadly, this is not unrealistic, since IP has more than 90 MCi of Cs-137). The consequences included 54,000 – 143,000 extra cancer deaths, and economic costs due to evacuation of $117-566 billion. Perhaps that is not a grand enough scale to get the industry’s attention, but common citizens in reactor communities everywhere have certainly caught on to their vulnerability. And if the industry doesn’t take this seriously, that should help to explain your credibility problem with more and more of the public.
Paul Primavera, are you aware of how bizarre it seems that you call Mr. Gunter’s critique of defensibility of reactors “suspect” – and then in the very next paragraph you are pointing the finger at the vulnerability of chemical plants close to NY? Should we take that to mean you should be entered on the “watch list” you are implying for Gunter, or does that mean that the atomic power industry knows it cannot take much scrutiny?
General Electric’s own engineers tried to sound the alarm about their BWR jalopies light years ago, and citizen litigants like Wells Eddleman (Shearon Harris) tried to herd the NRC (futile effort) toward expanding the Design Basis Threat to include terrorists and large airplanes – in the 1980’s! Now the industry and its ‘regulator’ sit in the mess they have made for us all: overfull reactor fuel pools at BWR’s up in the air, with a containment no better than those chemical plants you pointed to, and I’m afraid denial is the best recipe for disaster. Perhaps you all could try an alternative: take the criticism that is going to increasingly be focused on your mess, and do something positive with it instead of trying to shoot the messenger. We are all trying to keep our families safe.
Think: Hardened On-Site Storage. Take the jalopies off-line. For your great grandchildren’s sake.
Anonymous said…
Post Script: Mr. Gunter, did you in fact mean that terrorists would only attempt a reactor takeover with box cutters?! 20000 jihadis brandishing utility knives: perhaps the industry could defend against such an attack.
Anonymous said…
Greetings,

No offense taken Mr. Primavera.

The facts increasingly speak for themselves and we shall see what is exposed as the lie. I have always understood that one lie begats a thousand lies to mean that the lie much harder to conceal. Let us reveal the truth together.

Mr. Nord has eloquently expressed the concerns of the National Academy of Sciences April 2005 report. Either Mr. Primavera has not read the version of the National Academy of Sciences redacted for the public in its April 2005 report or has chosen to selectively forget some of its most alarming contents.

Perhaps, there are those who would just as soon dismiss the Academy as liars, too. That would be far more convenient than facing up to the Academy analysis that an zirconium fuel fire would inflict tens of thousands of cancer fatalities extending out hundreds of miles. I would call that pretty much of the Mid Atlantic seaboard. Did you overlook that part of the report, Mr. Primavera et al?

Perhaps it would be easier and much less expensive to simply round up the Academy authors for some extended resort time at Gitmo?

To ignore this continued vulnerability, particularly from the 24 GE BWR Mark Is, is in my mind even beyond the pale of "suspect behavior."

What would make that all the more clear would be the revelation that as in the example of the Davis-Besse vessel head corrosion debacle, this "turning a blind eye" approach to safety and security regulation by NRC is the product of pre-mediated lobbying efforts to suppress a realistic DBT to keep nuclear power profits up and safety/security capital costs down.

Now would that be treachery--- motiviated by an allegience instead to international corporate profits at the expense of the health, safety and security of the American people?

"A subtle traitor needs no sophister."

Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth,5.i.191
Anonymous said…
Mr. Primavera,

Yes, I am well aware of Mr. Dyer's dismissal of our emergency enforcement petition on the vulnerability of the Mark I elevated spent fuel storage pools, it is consistent with the Commission's blanket dismissal of the NAS study.

If in fact the NRC is a culprit in this instance along with NEI that decision was no surprise, only a matter of clarification for the record.

Don't forget to add the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General to your list of so-called perpetrators of "scare tactics of terrorists."
Rod Adams said…
Paul and Jim - good job in taking on the detailed arguments and pointing out the many ways in which the nuclear industry is held to a different and much higher standard than the fossil fuel industry.

This is one more opportunity for me to point out that many so called "environmental groups" receive a large portion of their funds from foundations and individuals with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Investing in fights against nuclear power has been an extremely profitable investment for those supporters.

Of course, I am not saying that the Nuclear Information and Resource Service is one of those groups since I have no idea where their funding comes from. They choose not to put such information on their web site.

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