[Radical Edward]

Originally Posted by CjC

Surely Nuclear Rods for powerstations are not likely to be enriched enough to produce the same effect as a bomb? If anything we'd have a critical meltdown like Chernobyl, and clearly Chernobyl's power station was not quite as protected against the odds as ours. True it may effect a number of people in and around the area but I would suspect its effect would have little impact of fear generation for the uk seeing as we keep our stations a fair way away from the most clustered communities.

Dear oh Dear :/

first of all, the aim of smashing a plane into a nuclear plant is not to make it explode like a bomb (as you say, you can't get the critical mass because it isn't enriched enough) but to just blow up the plant itself and disseminate radioactive waste into the atmosphere. In many ways this is far more destructive in the long term than a nuclear bomb is (apart from the really massive ones like the tsar bomba).

Secondly, only the russian designed power stations and some older plants were capable of meltdown because of their design. modern power stations simply cannot have a meltdown because of the way the feedback mechanisms work and the general design.