European Power Reactors Are Terrorist Targets, Groups Warn

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 12, 2004 (ENS) - European environmental groups have stepped up calls for the closure of nuclear power stations following an official German assessment that many reactors could be vulnerable to terrorist attack.

Germany's five oldest nuclear power stations should be closed immediately because they are vulnerable to terrorist attacks from the air similar to those in New York in 2001, the German Radiation Protection Agency (Bundesamtes für Strahlenschutz - BfS) said late last month.

In a newspaper interview, agency BfS chief Wolfram Koenig suggested that the operating life of other nuclear plants could be extended to compensate for losses in output. This would minimize any impact on greenhouse gas emissions, because whatever their potential for accident, nuclear power plants do not emit climate warming greenhouse gases.

Nuclear operators rejected BfS's call, claiming that security had been beefed up since the September 11 attacks.

Greenpeace has sent national nuclear safety authorities in 30 countries translated summaries of the German report, demanding that they carry out similar reviews.

Wolfram König is president of the German Radiation Protection Agency. (Photo courtesy Lutheran Church)

"If the head of Germany's Radiation Protection Authority says five reactors should close, then they must be closed now. However, this is not just a problem for Germany, but one for every country with nuclear reactors," he said.

Today, Swedish and Danish environmental groups challenged a recent official report which concluded that Swedish reactors could withstand a plane crash, and called for documents behind the study to be released.

Nine Swedish and Danish green NGOs Wednesday called on the Swedish nuclear regulatory authority to make public the assessments that allegedly prove that the Swedish nuclear power plants can withstand a plane crash.

The NGOs said they reject the conclusions of the Nuclear Safety Inquiry Commission that expresses confidence in the safety and radiation protection of the Swedish nuclear power plants and said that no further measures are necessary to protect them against terrorist attacks.

The objections have been clarified in comments to the report, recently submitted to the Swedish Ministry of Environmental Affairs.

Nuclear power plant in Germany (Photo courtesy Greenpeace Germany)

But they warned that these results are in conflict with estimates in practically all other countries that have developed nuclear power programs.

How the Swedish assessments have been made is still unclear, because they are kept a secret. The green NGOs now demand that SKI make public the assessments that have caused the Commission to draw these conclusions.

"In Germany, the German Radiation Protection Agency has demanded that five of the oldest nuclear power reactors must be closed, because they are not able to withstand a terrorist attack in the form of an airplane crash, in some cases not even from a small plane. The reactors in question have the same age or are newer than the Swedish reactors Barsebaeck 2, Ringhals 1 and 2 and Oskarshamn 1 and 2," the groups said.

Barsebaeck 2, a boiling water reactor at Malmohus on the southern tip of Sweden, is of special concern because it is so near to large centers of population such as Copenhagan.

In 1980 the Swedes voted to close the last of their reactors by the end of 2010. But all parliaments and governments since have slowed the enforcement of that decision. Sweden had proposed to close Barsebaeck 2 in 2001, but when 2000 arrived, the government announced to Parliament that the country needs electricity, and there are no environmentally acceptable alternatives.

In his January 2002 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush said that U.S. forces “found diagrams of American nuclear power plants” in al-Qaeda materials in Afghanistan. An al-Qaeda training manual lists nuclear plants as among the best targets for spreading fear in the United States.

The U.S. government is taking the threat seriously. In February 2002, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an advisory to the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants that terrorists might try to fly hijacked planes into some of them. Eight governors have independently ordered the National Guard to protect nuclear reactors in their states.

A Greenpeace Sweden banner hung on the Swedish Barsebaeck 2 nuclear power plant calls for it to be shut down. (Photo courtesy Greenpeace Sweden)

"The analyses are exclusively made by people within the established controlling system. The experts are recruited from SKI and SSI and the nuclear industry itself. People from independent research institutes and the international expert community are not welcome," says Kjell Andersson, the chairman of Folkkampanjen mot Kärnkraft-Kärnvapen, who has tried to get access to the documents in question.

In less than two months the Swedish government will decide when the nuclear power reactors in Sweden will be decommissioned, including Barsebaeck 2.

The official who on behalf of the Swedish government is negotiating with the nuclear industry has publicly stated that he expects the reactors to be in operation for another 40 years. Because the calculations that determine the safety status of the Swedish nuclear power plants as regards their physical protection are kept a secret, they will be not a part of the basis for the government’s decision, primarily because they are kept out of the public debate.

Because of Barsebaeck 2’s close vicinity to the Danish metropolitan area, SKI’s assessments of the Swedish nuclear power stations’ ability to resist an airplane crash are important not only to the Swedish but also to the Danish population, the groups said.

The appeal for information was signed by Folkkampanjen mot Kärnkraft-Kärnvapen, the Swedish anti-nuclear movement, Friends of the Earth Sweden, The Danish Ecological Council, NOAH – Friends of the Earth Denmark, The Danish Society for the Conservation of Nature, The Danish Organisation for Renewable Energy, Eco-net, and Nature and Youth.