Redstate

This made me think, back in the o'l school days we had pretty easy access to radiologic materials.   And there are some very hot items you can get your hands on if you do a little searching.  Does this constitute a threat?  I mean a chunk of a certain type of art glass is not something you want to be sitting next to every day, but could you use it for terrorism?  And these reactors for research are pretty hard to break or compromise, although if you suck the water out you can count on being dead soon.    But what about medical radiologic waste?  Or some other waste that is not secure, because its not as dangerous, but could still cause panic or terror.  Or are the real peddlers of panic the major networks?

Not knowing enough to answer your technical questions, but my guess is the real peddlers of panic are the networks. But that's just a wild guess based on their normal standards of reporting.

Plus, with the coming push for expanding our energy generation, and the probably drive for more nuclear power, it's time to rev up the nuclear nightmare scenarios to try to head that off.

If you have the level of smarts necessary to do something dangerous with what you'd find at these reactors, you have more than enough smarts to do a helluva lot more damage with things that are much easier to commandeer.

The big issue is that they just plain don't have that many talented folks who could do something useful with a test reactor's amount of fissionables.  They'd end up with some twit pulling a fuel rod out of the core and having it melt through his hands.

Thanks for the expo.  This also reminds me of the SNL classic from Gulf War I, "Mr. Secretary, What are our weaknesses and how might the Iraqis expoilt them?"  I'm surprised they didn't crash a GM truck into a lab to see if the could get a "really big" reaction.

I just read the ABCNews piece and it gets more and more interesting.  This was a nationwide full court press by journalism students, arranged by the deans of their respective journalism schools.  This pattern is fairly consistent now:  a nonprofit organization in concert with a for-profit media entity get together with a group of deans from a few a-list universities, who then assemble a team of student interns to do an activist muckracking piece.  Have a look at Carnegie's grantmaking, in particular the more than $2.3 million it gave the the Tides Foundation (Teresa Heinz Kerry) and the $1.2 million it gave to the NRDC, who are certainly no friends of the American nuclear power industry.  The Tides foundation takes that money and doles it out to even more activist groups that the people at Carnegie don't necessarily want to be directly associated with.  Creative, huh?  But remember -- liberals are outspent and outmaneuvered...that's the Official Story.  ;)

ABC News conducted its investigation in conjunction with Carnegie Corporation of New York, which invited university deans at five schools to select two of their most promising journalism and government graduate students to work with the ABC News investigative unit for the summer.

This nationwide full-court press of A-list schools was impressive:

• Michael Andersen, Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism




• Traci Curry, University of California, Berkeley Grad. School of Journalism




• Steve Grove, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government




• David Hughes, Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism




• Melia J. Patria, Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism




• Michelle Rabinowitz, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Comm.




• Ariana Reguzzoni, University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism




• Tamika Thompson, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Comm.




• Hsing Wei, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government




• Karson Yiu, Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism

One of the contributors to RedState, Jjayson, and I had a conversation about the reserach reactor on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley a while back.  Maybe he'd like to contribute a little more information to this story if he's still around.  Of course, the effect of all this is to publicly embarrass the schools that still have nuclear research reactors and goad them into shutting them down and dismantling them.  That will gradually undermine the nuclear physics departments at those universities and deplete the pool of qualified nuclear engineers and researchers.  It's interesting that one of the people ABCNews interviewed was Dan Hirsch, the head of a nuclear watchdog group called "Committee to Bridge the Gap."

That's interesting, because the Committee to Bridge the Gap has been around for quite some time, and one of their major initiatives, apparently, has been to oppose the development of nuclear energy in space -- for military or peaceful uses.

That link is to a 1988 position paper.  Committee to Bridge the Gap, I take it, was also one of the opposition groups to the SDI.

The principal application of space nuclear power, however, and the driving force behind cunent development programs, is its use in military space system. A ban on nuclear power in orbit would be one particularly effective means of restricting deployment of such systems.

My Lord, isn't the nuclear story just so 1980's?  There are things way more dangerous than nuclear materials that drive by your home all the time.  Think of railroad cars filled with chemicals.  We seem fine with those things but anything with the "N" word automatically results in irrational fears.

We have got to "reposition" nuclear energy into something non-negative.  Perhaps Nukes need to take a page from the liberal playbook and rename themselves into something nicer, like "progressive."

The bottom line is that France generates most of their power from nuclear plants, and until I see Pee Pee LePeu glowing, I'm gonna call all this nuclear fear-mongering a bunch of EnviroWacko hooie.  The fear of flying is about as credible a fear as this.

I'd imagine that a really smart and evil sort of fellow could do all sorts of bad things to the water supply or the electrical grid.    

But I guess nuclear catastrophe sells more copy.

We've already had several stories about the ease of access to chemical facilities.

Someone just figured they were out of other dangerous things to try and scare us about for the week, so they thought they'd through in a juicy nuclear story...

LGF just posted this http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=17866_Research_Reactors_Dange
rously_Insecure&only

as a serious post.  Doesn't Charles read RedState?

And I'm certain that all these stalwart supporters of truth and honesty:

• woke up in the morning in their air conditioned/heated homes or apartments;
  
• took their electically heated showers;
  
• dryed their hair with their electric hair dryers;
  
• fixed their breakfast using their electric appliances;
  
• took their cell phones off their electic chargers;
  
• picked up their electic powered laptop computers;
  
• made certain their 'Stamp Out Nuclear Power' membership cards were in their wallets;
  

and sallied forth to do battle against the evil doers of American capitalism.

A pox on all their houses.

So now you're not allowed to use electricity if you don't think nuclear power is good?  What if you think hydroelectic is great?  Then is it okay as long as you live next to a big dam?

(I think nuclear power is fine, but the chickenhawk charge seems to have created a cottage industry of similar arguments from the right.)

... are apparently predisposed to misunderstanding.

Is your point that the press has unique and special powers and responsibilities?

that wasn't my point at all.

But now that you bring it up, yes the press does claim, and possess, a special place in a free society. A place that they have completely abdicated in recent years.

...but I am really struggling to see your point.  If it's not that because they are part of the press and therefore have some sort of heightened responsibility to avoid hypocrisy as a result; and it's not that you shouldn't be down on nuclear energy if you use electricity, what is your point?

Incidentally, my question about the unique powers/responsibilities of the press was a bit tongue in cheek, given the general consensus around here that the press is not worthy of any special position in society.