The overall impact and conclusion of the ABC presentation was that such facilities pose major terrorist risks as potential "dirty bombs" and even atom bombs.
Because of the inaccuracies and harm that such a biased national broadcast creates, it is critical to assess the motivation and content of the ABC presentation and describe the actual situation at and purpose of these reactor facilities.
The Carnegie endowment organization funded a visit by selected nonscience student teams to attempt to gain improper access to the reactors and test security measures. The Carnegie organization is very critical of the nuclear enterprise, particularly the U.S. nuclear weapons program. ABC has a long history of anti-nuclear bias including recent coverage of security at Los Alamos National Laboratory and purported dangers at nuclear facilities. Upon previewing the Carnegie reactor security investigation, ABC elected to air only those university reactors with perceived security deficiencies.
The claim that the student team breached security at the University of Utah reactor was particularly misleading and deceitful.
The reactor is sited in the MEB that houses four major departments each with graduate and undergraduate students. These several thousand students have access to the building 24 hours a day for class work and research studies.
The ABC student team entered the outside doors to MEB and approached the entrance door to the reactor laboratory that is accessible to anyone. ABC incorrectly presented this on national television as unsecured, immediate access to the nuclear reactor.
In reality the nuclear reactor fuel core resides over 100 feet from this entrance door and is located 25 feet below ground level in a double-wall reactor tank filled with water. The entrance door is a high security locked door that allows passage only to authorized persons. Furthermore, final access to the reactor itself requires passage through three more locked doors.
The last two doors are alarmed, and forced or unauthorized passage through these doors alerts campus security and armed officers familiar with the facility immediately respond. Testing of these alarm systems and officer response is performed as required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on a monthly basis.
It is well-established that all nuclear reactors including university reactors cannot serve as "atom bombs" or nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, ABC implied that many of these university reactors possessed sufficient quantities for one or more nuclear weapons.
The path for producing a functional nuclear weapon from the uranium fuel in these reactors is extremely difficult and complex. Separation and refinement of the uranium is necessary, followed by casting of metal billets for machining.
Then the pyrphoric uranium must be machined into highly precise geometries for insertion into a complex weapon assembly device. Indeed, there is less potential for a terrorist to produce bombs from uranium in university reactor fuel than to produce assault weapons from metal in scrap metal yards. Since most American fatalities in Iraq arise from assault weapons, perhaps we should impose security measures upon all scrap metal sites in the United States and the world.
Diane Sawyer's question, "Why do so many universities have nuclear reactors?" requires response. The University of Utah TRIGA reactor has operated since 1975 and trained over 500 students in nuclear engineering.
These students are now in nuclear fields including work at national laboratories, nuclear plants, naval reactors and defense installations. One of these Utah students served as the commanding officer of the USS Los Angeles attack submarine and rose to the rank of rear admiral. U.S. national defense is based upon nuclear weapons. Nuclear reactors are as essential to training nuclear engineers as computers are to training computer engineers.
Most important for the economic and political security of the United States is the recognized capacity of nuclear plants to produce the large inventories of hydrogen fuel required for transition of the United States from an oil-dependent economy to a hydrogen economy within the next few decades.
This production of hundreds of millions of tons of hydrogen can be accomplished economically, without greenhouse gas emissions, and with existing domestic uranium resources.
Is nuclear energy important to the United States? The answer is an emphatic yes. Nuclear power provides 20 percent of U.S. electrical power without greenhouse gases. The average customer cost for nuclear generated electricity is less than natural gas, oil, and many coal-fired facilities.
The U.S. Energy Act of 2005 recently signed by the president recognizes this fact and provides support and government reform to encourage vigorous growth of advanced nuclear power plants.
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Gary M. Sandquist is a professor of mechanical engineering and former director of nuclear engineering at the University of Utah.
