Originally Posted by bocastephen
Don't bank on that. Also, this doesn't even begin to touch the number of nuclear reactors that are housed, pretty much totally unprotected (or protected by horny morons, as ABC News demonstrated) at various Universities all across our great land. At the very least, they make great dirty bombs to spread a layer of radioactive contaminant on their neighboring college towns, at worse, someone could cause one to totally melt down.
This is tougher than it sounds. You could pretty easily
wreck one of these test reactors, but spreading contamination or causing a meltdown are tough - especially the latter. You would need to disable a
bunch of safety mechanisms, then shim out the rods. Even then, most of the research reactors are so small, a meltdown wouldnt do much. You really need a big reactor and a lot of technical know-how to make attacking a nuke plant worthwhile, and most college reactors just dont qualify. And forget stealing the fuel or expended fuel for use in a weapon - removing spent fuel without killing yourself takes specially equipment and a couple of weeks of time.
LNG terminal....now that is a much different story. Those things scare the heck out of me. Or an oil refinery.