Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File
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Ext #1 – Reactors SafeThe industry has learned from past mistakes- there won’t be any meltdown (Mike Stuckey 1-23-07 “New nuclear power ‘wave’ — or just a ripple?” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16272910/) In the U.S., chastened nuclear operators focused on improving safety and efficiency at existing plants. They were successful: There have been no notable U.S. accidents since Three Mile Island and the U.S. reactor fleet has produced at about 90 percent of licensed capacity since 2001, up considerably from efficiency figures of the early 1980s. Nuclear plants today produce about 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States. Industry improvements are “an outgrowth, in all honesty, of the Three Mile Island accident," NEI's Kerekes said, "because the steps that were taken after that do a better job of sharing information in our industry and applying best practices.”
The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States raised concern about nuclear power plant security. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes several reactor security provisions, including requirements to revise the security threats that nuclear plant guard forces must be able to defeat, regular force-on-force security exercises at nuclear power plants, and the fingerprinting of nuclear facility workers. Ext #2 – No ProbabilityNuclear accidents aren’t probableHolt 07 (Mark Holt, Specialist in Energy Policy, Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Nuclear Energy Policy,” July 12, 2007, http://sharp.sefora.org/issues/nuclear-energy-policy/) In terms of public health consequences, the safety record of the U.S. nuclear power industry in comparison with other major commercial energy technologies has been excellent. During approximately 2,700 reactor-years of operation in the United States,15 the only incident at a commercial nuclear power plant that might lead to any deaths or injuries to the public has been the Three Mile Island accident, in which more than half the reactor core melted. Public exposure to radioactive materials released during that accident is expected to cause fewer than five deaths (and perhaps none) from cancer over the subsequent 30 years. A study of 32,000 people living within 5 miles of the reactor when the accident occurred found no significant increase in cancer rates through 1998, although the authors noted that some potential health effects “cannot be definitively excluded.” The relatively small amounts of radioactivity released by nuclear plants during normal operation are not generally believed to pose significant hazards, although some groups contend that routine emissions are unacceptably risky. There is substantial scientific uncertainty about the level of risk posed by low levels of radiation exposure; as with many carcinogens and other hazardous substances, health effects can be clearly measured only at relatively high exposure levels. In the case of radiation, the assumed risk of low-level exposure has been extrapolated mostly from health effects documented among persons exposed to high levels of radiation, particularly Japanese survivors of nuclear bombing in World War II. The consensus among most safety experts is that a severe nuclear power plant accident in the United States is likely to occur less frequently than once every 10,000 reactor-years of operation. (For the current U.S. fleet of about 100 reactors, that rate would yield an average of one severe accident every 100 years.) These experts believe that most severe accidents would have small public health impacts, and that accidents causing as many as 100 deaths would be much rarer than once every 10,000 reactor-years. On the other hand, some experts challenge the complex calculations that go into predicting such accident frequencies, contending that accidents with serious public health consequences may be more frequent. AT: Nuclear Terrorism1. Only a tenth of a percent risk of a terrorist attack that will kill millions in the next 50 years – prefer our impacts on timeframe and probability Vaclav Smil, Distinguished Professor, University of Manitoba, POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW 31(2): June 2005, 201–236 Good arguments can be made for seeing terrorist actions as a shocking (also painful and costly) but manageable risk among other risks and to point out the general tendency to exaggerate the likelihood of new, infrequent, but spectacular, threats. On the other hand, it is understandable why a responsible political leadership would tend to see terrorism as an unprecedented, and intolerably deadly, challenge to the perpetuation of modern open societies. In any case, nobody can assign any meaningful probabilities to these different outcomes, whereas a clear judgment is possible regarding any future natural catastrophes: in order to leave a mark on world history they would have to be on scales not experienced during the historic era and would have to claim, almost instantly or within a few months, many millions of lives. Events of sufficient magnitude to produce such a toll took place within the past million years, but none of them has probabilities higher than 0.1 percent during the next 50 years 2. No nuclear terrorism. If they haven’t done it with more power over 15 years, they won’t now. Sigger, 1 – 26 (Jason, Defense Policy Analyst focusing on Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense issues, “Terrorism Experts Can Be Alarmists, Too”, http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/01/terrorism-experts-can-be-alarmists-too-1.html) You find the famous bin Laden 1998 quote about WMDs, references from George "slam dunk" Tenet's book on al Qaeda intentions and actions in the desert, meetings between Muslim scientists and suppliers, statements by terrorists that were obtained under "interrogations," and yes, even Jose Padilla's "dirty bomb" - a charge which people may remember the US government dropped because it had no evidence on this point. And no discussion about AQ would be complete without the "mobtaker" device that never really emerged in any plot against the West. That is to say, we have a collection of weak evidence of intent without any feasible capability and zero WMD incidents - over a period of fifteen years, when AQ was at the top of their game, they could not develop even a crude CBRN hazard, let alone a WMD capability. Mowatt-Larsen doesn't attempt to answer the obvious question - why didn't AQ develop this capability by now? He points to a June 2003 article where the Bush administration reported to the UN Security Council that there was a "high probability" that al Qaeda would attack with a WMD within two years. The point that the Bush administration could have been creating a facade for its invasion into Iraq must have occurred to Mowatt-Larsen, but he dodges the issue. This is an important report to read, but not for the purposes that the author intended. It demonstrates the extremely thin thread that so many terrorist experts and scientists hang on when they claim that terrorists are coming straight at the United States with WMD capabilities. 3. Impossible for terrorists to deploy nukes Asia Times 10 [Asia Times Online, 4/16/10, “Terrorism: The nuclear summit’s ‘straw man’”, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LD16Ak02.html] In actuality, the threat of terrorists acquiring a working nuclear device are relatively remote. Building nuclear weapons is a complex and resource intensive business; if it were not, more countries would already possess them. That leaves the option of stealing a weapon. But pilfering a nuclear weapon is not simply a case of planning a sophisticated smash-and-grab operation. Nuclear weapons have multi-layered security systems, both technological and human. For example, access to nuclear facilities and weapons follows strict chains of command. Warheads are usually stored in several different pieces that require a cross-expertise and technical sophistication to assemble. In addition, they employ security features called Permissive Action Links (PAL) that use either external enabling devices or advanced encryption to secure the weapon. Older security systems include anti-tamper devices capable of exploding the device without a nuclear chain reaction. Not to mention that effectively delivering a nuclear device comes with its own hefty challenges. Thus, there are many serious obstacles to terrorists actually obtaining and setting off a nuclear bomb. 4. No extinction Gregg Easterbrook, The New Republic Editor, 2003 [Wired, "We're All Gonna Die!" 11/7, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/doomsday.html] If we're talking about doomsday - the end of human civilization - many scenarios simply don't measure up. A single nuclear bomb ignited by terrorists, for example, would be awful beyond words, but life would go on. 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