Communications after nuclear catastrophe - Palo Verde power station

[tfurrows]

The largest nuclear power station in the US, supplying power for over 4mil people, is just 45 miles from where I live. In a nuclear catastrophe of any kind, what are considerations to take into account when it comes to communications? Or, will that be the least of anyones concerns :)

[Oregon Pioneer]

My oldest son is studying nuclear engineering and from him I've learned some about the industry. Because of the immense amounts of power they produce, a lot of thinking and design goes into their planning to ensure their safety. The old designs of the reactor containment buildings were built to withstand a commercial jet crashing into them. Beyond that the power company SWAT teams protecting them have Santa Clause budgets that allow them to be the best in the world. If you pay any attention to the various SWAT team competions/olympics in North America, you'll see that the nuclear powerplant teams are always in the finallist teams, beating out LAPD, CBP, Detroit PD, and I know even a CIA team. I believe the Bruce Power (a Canadian nuclear powerplant) SWAT team won the North American championship either last year or the year before. What I'm trying to say is that in the realm of terrorist cells attacking our infrastructure, nuclear powerplants such as Palo Verde are in-fact very hard targets to crack. If they try something the terrorists might singe the first chainlink fence, but they are going to get squished like a bug after that. Oregon State University's nuclear engineering program and several nuclear powerplant design companies that have spun off from the OSU Nukeheads, are now designing the next generation of reactors to be deep underground to provide yet another level of protection.

The greatest threat to nuclear powerplants really isn't much of a threat anymore, knock on wood... During the Cold War the Soviets had some of their ICBM MIRV's (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile- Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles) set to surface blast a 700 kilo-ton warhead on each nuclear powerplant. Not only to destroy them (our 102-104 commercial nuclear powerplants have been producing 20% of America's electrical power for decades) but the mushroom cloud would throw the powerplant's nuclear waste into the ensuing fallout. No fault of the Russians, we would have done the same thing to them. Understand that the more things change the more they stay the same, so if heaven-forbid we should enter a world war, these strategies on these targets would be back in play.

Tfurrows- if that happens, you're right in that communications would be the last of your problems. The best thing you could do is to shelter in place. If you tried to evacuate or only hold up in your living room you're not going to live to be able to communicate on another day. I would strongly recommend Cresson Kearny's book Nuclear War Survival Skills or even an extensive Internet search on the topic of radiation shielding. Buying an in-ground tornado shelter with 3' of dirt on top of it would be the best solution. Heck, you can use it now as your families pantry or your children's play house. I'm not a fan of basement shelters because of the fact that your wood house can burn down on top of you. There's numerous design plans on expedient fallout shelters, but shoveling dirt like mad when seconds count and your families safety in the balance doesn't sound like fun to me.

You guarentee the safety of your own family, but I don't see the world's superpowers getting into a shoving match. MAD- Mutual Assured Destruction is still in play and I think the giants like their cities and people. Rouge nations are the main threat. Iran only has theater missiles. North Korea is progressing, but in the near future can only PROBABLY hit Honolulu, Anchorage, Seattle and Los Angles. I doubt nuclear powerplants would be an enemies first target, they would have a higher pay off with the soft targets of large cities. Specifically speaking about communications, EMP (electromagnetic pulse) is going to be you're biggest problem. The other piece is in the U.S. Navy's atmospheric atomic testing in the 40's and 50's, they found the higher amounts of radiation led to higher amounts of static. There's lots of free information on these topics. Remember- those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>

[tfurrows]

I would tend to agree that the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe in my area (man-caused or nature-caused) is almost nil... but nothing is impossible. It does sound like the thought is that shelter will be a far greater concern than communications, but I'm not quite there yet, with the exception of having thought a small amount of shelter-in-place. I'll look into your in-ground shelter, sounds interesting!

[fuzzy]

Kearney's book on nuclear survival was one of the first books I bought. It's a good treatment for nuclear situations, but also a good book for general prepping and survival projects.