25 simple ways terrorists could destroy San Onofre Nuclear Generating
Station and make SoCal uninhabitable for many millennia:
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1) Hijack a commercial jetliner ala WTC/Pentagon/PA disasters. If one
isn't enough, hijack two. If two isn't enough, hijack ten and be sure.
2) Rent, or even buy, a corporate jet so no pesky passengers can take back
the cockpit like what happened in PA. It would do plenty of damage, if not
quite as much as a jumbo jet. If one isn't enough, rent two...
3) A boat-bomb or depth-charge-carrying boat could be maneuvered over the
outflow tubes from the plant, which are each over a mile long and are
marked on navigation charts so that people don't drop their anchors on
them. Destroying them would destroy San Onofre's ability to cool
itself. (These tunnels may also be vulnerable to collapse when the waters
recede just prior to the arrival of a tsunami (as they always do), an
effect the NRC did not ever investigate despite professional advice that
they should.)
4) Steal a tank (as a depressed ex-soldier did in San Diego a few years
back) and ram it through the gate at San Onofre.
5) 50-caliber machine gun bullets would penetrate the coolant pumps, the
pipes, the control-room, etc. You can bicycle up to the plant with a
machine gun in a kiddie trailer, or simply stop your truck on the highway
(I-5) which runs past the plant, and blaze away. You could get thousands
of rounds in before anyone could stop you. Sure, you might not start a
sequence which results in a catastrophic meltdown if you just start
shooting without knowing your target well. But then again, the large
front-page aerial photo of the plant which was published yesterday in the
North County Times should give you more than enough information to aim at
the most vulnerable sections.
6) Until just recently the NRC published the GPS locations of the plants to
6 decimal places. (That web page has been taken down since September 11th,
2001.) Terrorists could target a cruise-missile against the plant, or a
ballistic missile, using these values. A well-aimed ballistic missile
wouldn't even need a warhead. It's kinetic energy would be enough to
destroy the plant. And removing the locations from the web site is
window-dressing at best, since the plants are kind of hard to hide in the
real world. Just ride by on your bike and get the necessary coordinates
with your portable GPS.
7) Throw a short-circuiting-bomblet or grenade at the switchyard and other
electrical areas of the plant. This would render it useless and could
cause a meltdown as well. (A "short-circuiting-bomblet or grenade" is a
small device that contains not shrapnel but long wires which criss-cross
the target's electrical cables and short everything out. NPPs need
constant, reliable off-site power to run, or they must use their emergency
backup diesel generators (which often don't start properly when they are
tested, and can also be shorted out along with the rest of the
station). Yes, these bombs exist and we used them in Kosovo.)
8) Replace various pages of the control-room operating manuals with ones
that contain misinformation so the operators do the wrong thing sooner or
later. (Requires one inside person; could be done years before the
accident occurs. It could already have been done at numerous NPPs and we
just don't know it.)
9) Get an insider to do something. Insiders have access to many vital
areas of the plant. There are thousands of workers at each plant. Some
are always disgruntled about one thing or another. And some might
accidentally say things at a party or somewhere, which others can use.
10) Derail a high-speed train off its tracks, which go by only about 100
to 200 feet away from the plant. With a little care and a bit of luck, the
train could actually be driven towards the plant by weakening the rail on
the plant side so the train falls towards that side.
11) Derail or blow up a chemical train on the tracks nearby. Such an
accident would probably kill everyone at the plant, which would probably
lead to a meltdown.
12) Mortars can be lofted into the plant from miles away, including a
nearby highway rest area, a state park, or from the Interstate itself. One
might call these a "drive-by war."
13) Crop-duster planes can be filled with gasoline instead of pesticides,
then the pilot simply turns on the vents in the final second or two before
impacting the plant. The fireball would be tremendous.
14) Rent a piece of construction equipment such as a Caterpillar, and
simply aim it for the control room and let it roll. Even if they kill the
driver they probably can't stop the vehicle.
15) Rent a truck and fill it with explosives (as Timothy McVeigh did in
Oklahoma City). There are not nearly enough perimeter controls to prevent
this. Although the gates appear to be guarded, there do not appear to be
nearly enough physical barriers, especially for a delivery truck which has
already made it past the perimeter on false pretences. (Even the plant's
soda machines need someone to come in with enough materiel (in cans, which
cannot be x-rayed) to blow the place to smithereens.)
16) Use two vehicles -- one to draw away the limited number of guards at
the plant, the other, which arrives a few seconds later from a different
direction, actually does the damage. A motor home at the state beach
nearby could be filled with terrorists who could take over the control room.
17) Steal some of the military training equipment on the base at Camp
Pendleton. This writer rode his bike over 20 miles on that military base
four months ago without being questioned or stopped, along with an ex-Navy
Seal. We did not realize the significance of our sojourn at the time.
18) Get an insider in the U.S. military to attack the plant with an A-10
Warthog or Apache helicopter. This isn't as far-fetched as it may
sound. A few years ago a distraught A-10 Warthog pilot suddenly veered off
course from his training mission, and flew 800 miles before running out of
gas and crashing into the side of a mountain. He carried four 500-lb bombs
at the time as well as machine-gun ammunition.
19) Since there is not a no-fly zone around the plant, any plane that
attacks it gets a free ride all the way in. No one can challenge a plane
which has not sent an "I have been hijacked" signal and which is flying in
legal airspace. The nearest civilian airport is about 10 miles away, or
about 5 minutes away for even the slowest airplanes. Our military could
not possibly react in time.
20) Besides dropping depth-charges on the outflow tunnels (see item #3,
"boat-bombs"), you could maneuver a boat very close to the plant, which is
located at the ocean's edge, and shell the plant from the boat. There are
numerous civilian harbors, beaches, etc. near the plant.
21) Multiple small planes can attack the plant at one time, overwhelming
even a sophisticated air defense system.
22) ASL -- Air, Sea, Land. Terrorists can utilize all three at once to
overwhelm the defenders.
23) NBC -- Nuclear, Biological, Chemical. Terrorists can attack the plant
with BC to kill the operators and the security forces, and then calmly walk
in and take over the plant.
24) (Censored -- the terrorists might not have thought of this one.)
25) The terrorists can simply wait for a meltdown to occur due to a natural
disaster such as a tsunami, earthquake, or tornado, or due to a
manufacturing defect, or operator error. The bottom line is, we have
terrorists in Southern California. Their name is Southern California Edison.