Shots Across the Bow

Reactors and Airplanes TJ Buttrick writes on the safety of a nuclear reactor if it were hit with a large passenger jet. While the secondary containment wall may fail, there are several more layers of safety features to protect the public.

As an example, at 3-Mile Island, just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, including failure of the plant operators to recognize and react to the casualty properly. They completely uncovered their core, and allowed it to melt down. With all of this, the highest radiation dose received, even by the people operating the plant was about 15-20rem, the same as that received by a patient undergoing a heart catheterization. This level of exposure would not even cause radiation sickness.

Granted, if a plane cracked the secondary containment, then managed to rupture the primary containment, and managed to cause enough damage for a fuel element failure to occur, then there would be some exposure to the public. But the exposure would be on a scale of the above mentioned medical procedure, not Chernobyl or Hiroshima.