With construction of many new nuclear reactors under discussion, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is grappling with the question of whether they should be designed to withstand a Sept. 11 style airplane attack.
The U.S. Department of Energy is trying to tackle the old problem of what to do with nuclear waste by revisiting an old solution: reprocessing. Critics are concerned that reprocessing will increase the supply of bomb-grade fissile material.
Shoulder-fired missiles are a threat to civilian jetliners, but putting antimissile defenses on planes is far too expensive to be practical now, according to a study by RAND, the private U.S. research organization.
Researchers at a government nuclear laboratory and a ceramics company in Salt Lake City say they have found a way to produce pure hydrogen with far less energy than other methods, raising the possibility of using nuclear power to indirectly wean the transportation system from its dependence on oil.
Widespread hydrogen use has been enthusiastically embraced by major corporations and environmentalists alike as a panacea for global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels, and is a particular favorite of the Bush administration. But skeptics, and even some hydrogen advocates, say that use of hydrogen could instead make the air dirtier and the globe warmer.
Nuclear industry officials and government security analysts debate the risks of terrorist attack on nuclear power plants.
The computers that control the electric power system around the nation have been probed from the Middle East, and terrorists may have inspected the physical equipment, said experts at a conference on the security of the electric system.
Since the suicidal terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, some experts on nuclear security are increasingly concerned that intruders could break into American weapons plants, assemble a nuclear bomb from materials there and explode it on the spot.
The security drills created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ensure that reactor security guards can repel terrorists involve mock attacks by only three intruders, assisted by one confederate inside the plant, according to a nuclear safety group. Even against such limited challenges, crews at nearly half the reactors have scored poorly on the drills, according to documents assembled by the group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, based in California.
The U.S. transportation department warned that the Global Positioning System — which airlines plan to use to land flights in zero visibility, railroads want for avoiding train collisions and ships use to navigate shoals — is vulnerable to interference and even "spoofing" by enemies. The report suggested that older technologies, which are more expensive and less precise but also more robust, needed to be maintained as a backups.