----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 6 10 Oct 1988 ON NUCLEAR POWER AND VIRUSES By Milo Tsukroff, former FidoNet Sysop. Contact through Willi-Board, 1:320/216.0. US Mail: 84 Ash St., Apt. 32, Willimantic, CT 06226-2943 May God protect us from 'experts'. Whether they are 'experts' on nuclear power plants, or on computer viruses, they make our lives miserable by knowing _almost_ everything, but not enough. Then they try to run our lives accordingly. Fredrick L. Rice's article "To Disassemble The Machine", in FidoNews 5-36 (5 Sep 1988) was an interesting work of fiction. I highly recommend it, as it has many good, sound technical points. However, I wish to point out a few inaccuracies, and then write something along the same lines that'll knock your socks off -- about computer viruses. The problem with article is that it tells a great deal about the nuclear industry, but it is totally wrong in a few minor details. They're the critical ones. What the article hypothesizes about a nuclear plant accident resulting from an unexpectedly strong California earthquake could probably happen, but never to the degree that it predicts. Even worse for the position stated in the article, no possibility of nuclear explosion exists. One major point that the article does not discuss is that nuclear piping and valves are not the kind of pipes and valves that we are all used to. An electron-beam welding company that I worked for occasionally welds nuclear valves. The piping for a nuclear plant is rather interesting -- the pipes that these valves control have an inner diameter of about 3 inches. Their outer diameter is about 9 inches. That's right -- the walls are 3 inches thick of pure stainless steel. I wonder if these pipes would even be affected by a ground-zero atomic blast, let alone a little 8.5-Richter earthquake. Even granting the possibility that these pipes _could_ break, as metals (especially a nuclear reactor's hydrogen-embrittled steels) do strange things under stress, the prospect of a nuclear explosion occurring in an atomic power plant is ludicrous. Let me state here that a worst-case scenario can indeed include hydrogen-oxygen gas explosions, core melt-down, and magnificently huge steam explosions. The article is technically correct on those points, and we avoided them by only a little bit at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident. The prospect of a radiation-laden steam cloud being forced out of nuclear plant is a very real but very low-probability threat, one which we should be prepared to deal with. But the possibility of a nuclear EXPLOSION occurring in a nuclear power plant does not exist. At all. First of all, uranium metal is never used in a commercial reactor. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not allow it. Instead, the uranium is dispersed in ceramic. The ceramic is made into small pellets, each of which is so low in radioactivity that you could hold one in your hand with only a small amount of shielding and not receive any dangerous levels of radiation (not that I would want to, mind you!). Ceramic can melt, given high enough temperatures. I'll even grant that, in the article's scenario, the ceramic (not pure uranium, though!) could melt together, fuse, and heat up drastically, thus producing a killer cloud of atomically charged steam. But the differences between uranium isotopes does not seem to be understood. Uranium-238, which is non-radioactive, is the primary isotope of uranium. The fissionable isotope, uranium-235, appears in very small percentage in uranium. It is present in such small quantities that the nuclear-fuel manufacturers must 'enrich' the uranium that they sell with a little bit of uranium-235 so that the pellets will sustain a nuclear chain reaction. The process of separating out U-235 from U-238 is so difficult that it does not occur in nature. If a nuclear reactor is to explode in a run-away nuclear fission chain reaction, as some of the less-informed but more zealous anti-nuclear groups claim is possible, the reactor would have to be a fast-fission, pure-uranium fueled reactor. (It is possible that the reactors on nuclear-powered ships come under this label. I don't know, though.) Given a commercial nuclear reactor, with a sizeable amount of fuel, and under the worst of circumstances, an atomic-bomb type of explosion cannot possibly occur. You can check with the more reputable anti-nuclear groups on this. One more thing has been left out: The production of fissionable plutonium by alpha-absorbtion of U-238 atoms. (Sorry, I don't have a physics book on hand to look up the exact atomic number.) According to an engineer at the Northeast Utilities Millstone nuclear power plant, at the end of a fuel pellet's life, most of the U-235 is spent. Nearly 40 percent of the pellet's heating power comes from plutonium fission. These plutonium atoms are, again, contained in the ceramic matrix of the pellet. The possibility of spontaneous separation, refinement, and run-away nuclear fission ("atomic-bomb" explosion) does not exist. I commend the article for being a well-written piece. Problems with poorly-located nuclear plants have resulted both from the dollar greed of the power industy managements, and from citizens' refusal to let power plants be built in safer places (the old "Not In My Back Yard" or NIMBY syndrome). While reading "To Disassemble the Machine", I had a happy thought: Why not do a 'worst case' scenario about problems with computer viruses? Why not even take a couple of _very_ minor liberties with the facts, and create a scenario to put fear into the heart of _every_ technically competent reader? . . . . . . Well, I don't have to. The editors of TIME Magazine have done it for me -- and on the front cover, no less! They feature Computer Viruses on the front cover of their September 26th edition. Their set of articles insinuates that viruses are here, they're spreading fast, and that no BBS or computer network is safe. This issue of Time will certainly make future business for FidoNet quite ... interesting, shall we say? It scares the dickens out of _me_, that's for sure! Sadly, I think that this is a great and terrible piece of irony. "To Disassemble the Machine" strikes another blow in the direction of anti-technological ignorance. It practically screams its message of "Down with the nukes!" Now FidoNet will receive the same bitter fruit of non-technical ignorance, hatred, fear, and loathing -- directed at its own Bulletin Board Systems. The very system that has been such a medium of communication, and therefore such a benefit to Mankind, is laid low by ignorant 'experts' who think that they'll make a buck scaring the daylights of the average computer user. I don't appreciate FidoNews carrying that article, and I don't appreciate Time for printing that issue on computer viruses. I that that it goes to show that if you tolerate, even foster, anti-technological attitudes, and try to act the 'expert' about what you are attacking, it'll get back to you eventually. Or, as it was better said by someone else: "What goes around, comes around." God save us from 'experts'! Anybody for a nice, little, radioactive virus? -------------------------- (I have expressed my own opinions here. In no way do I bear Mr. Rice or the editors and writers of TIME Magazine any personal ill will. My address is in this article. FLAMES > NUL.DEV, thank you.)