Nuclear power plant: Security, dirty bombs and civil rights

ONE consequence of nuclear power that dominates all others is the safety and security of a nuclear reactor facility. The use of nuclear power inevitably brings an unquantifiable but real danger of nuclear blackmail and sabotage from terrorists, extremists, criminals and lunatics. The safe and secure transportation of nuclear materials is also of great concern.
Decisions on policy regarding the development of nuclear energy involve judgments concerning the hazards of plutonium and other actinides produced as radioactive wastes in a reactor. According to the World Nuclear Association, total world generation of plutonium in spent fuel rods is about 70 thousand kilograms per year. It takes approximately 10 kilograms of nearly pure plutonium-239 to make a bomb.
The production of staggering amount of plutonium gives rise to the risk of its diversion to make nuclear weapons by rogue nations and terrorists. The grim reality is that any country that has nuclear power plants will have access to the materials and technology needed for developing nuclear bombs. In 1974, India exploded a “peaceful nuclear device,” and with it also exploded the belief that there is a practical distinction between peaceful and military uses of nuclear energy.
In the often heated controversy over the future of nuclear power, it is the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons that appears to be the one most intractable to technical resolution and, as well, most insistently fundamental to the way people feel about nuclear power. If worldwide plutonium industry develops, then theft of plutonium, or even growth of an international black market in plutonium, seems quite likely. A market of few hundred kilograms worth millions of dollars per year is large enough to interest criminal groups and to have a major impact on nuclear terrorism.
The information and non-nuclear materials needed to make a “dirty” fission bomb is now widely distributed and available to the general public on the internet. Dozens of nations have or could acquire skills and facilities required to design and build dirty bombs using plutonium diverted from their civilian nuclear power programmes. Although crude, inefficient and unpredictable, such devices would nonetheless be highly destructive. Furthermore, fission explosives small enough to be transported by automobile could be built by small groups of people, even conceivably by individuals working alone, if they somehow manage to acquire the needed 10 kilograms of plutonium.
The concerns about plutonium arise not only for its explosive properties but also for its extreme radiotoxicity. Dispersed into the atmosphere by nuclear explosive devices, a small quantity of plutonium could cause an indeterminate number of deaths from lung cancer or fibrosis of the lung. The psychological impact of such a situation would be profound, normal activity in the affected area would be disrupted and decontamination could be very expensive.
Thus if nuclear power plants are to be well-enough protected to be totally immune to the above risks, the unavoidable consequence is a society dominated by prohibitions, surveillance and constraints, all justified by the magnitude of the danger. Consequently, it is inevitable that preference should be given to pliant and obedient character type workers. The use of nuclear energy, therefore, epitomises the centralisation of the government's power, thereby resulting in infringement on the civil rights of the citizens.

The writer is Professor of Physics at Fordhams University, New York.