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City At Risk
Area nuclear plants... vulnerable to disastrous terrorist attack
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Bevan said that based on what happened at Chernobyl, there would be a main zone about 18 miles around the plant where no one could live. Most of the radiation would be concentrated in a zone that stretched 40 or 50 miles out from the plant but, like Chernobyl, a certain percentage of the fallout would spread across the country.
"There's still a big pocket of it in Belarus, 400 miles from Chernobyl," he said.
But the fallout would do more than physical damage. It would make the surrounding community virtually unlivable, the economic implications of which would be locally, and even nationally, staggering.
A 1982 analysis by Sandia National Laboratory for the government showed the physical and economic damage that could be caused by a total meltdown at any of the country's nuclear power plants. This is relevant to Charlotte since, as the 1987 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report found, a plane smashing into a nuclear station could result in a similar release of radiation. The bottom line of the Sandia Lab report: People who lived within 35 miles of the plant would have to leave their homes and their businesses; they likely would never be able to return.
That's because as the radiation plume traveled, it would disperse radioactive particles that could be inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the skin. They could dissolve in water, coat homes and vehicles or travel on the fur of pets. Like at Chernobyl, radioactivity would poison land and the food grown on it a minimum of 40 miles away, and likely much farther. Water supplies would be unusable for decades and reservoirs might have to be condemned. Home and business owners would likely face costly cleanups if the structures they owned were still habitable, which would be unlikely. In heavily populated areas around nuclear plants like Indian Point, or McGuire and Catawba, that could be financially devastating for the region, and ultimately the entire country.
Special thanks to the New York Daily News reporters whose collaboration with Creative Loafing helped make the research for this story possible.
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