This was an Air Force engineering test of a concrete barrier that was to surround a nuclear reactor dome. Seems like it held pretty well since the F4 Phantom was vaporized. It hit at 500 mph.
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I think I saw an article on this clip a few years ago and it mentioned the concrete block that was hit was moved back a few feet?
Anyway, how relevant is an f-4 hit compared to a jumbo jet? and what is the design of a power plant–if most of the stuff outside the reactor dome is destroyed, can the reactor melt down anyway as in a loss of cooling water? Dispersion of waste material kept on sight?
Appeals to nuke power are so 1970. Google will save us all with its green power initiative. Thanks US GOV for sitting on your ass for 30 years while energy self sufficiency gets delayed in favor of corporate welfare. Makes me proud.
[This was to be an additional barrier around the dome. – ed.]
Given that the tough bits (engines and landing gear) were removed from the aircraft the net effect was that of smashing a beer can against a cinderblock wall. And the only reason it moved the concrete wall was because it was on air bearings (like an air-hockey puck).
Unfortunately, most of the nuclear material stored at a nuclear power plant is not in the containment building, but in the spent fuel pools, which do not have significant containment. A jet crashing into the spent fuel pool could displace all of the cooling water, allowing for either a fire or even criticality and sending tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere, creating a Chernobyl-like disaster.
#1 a few years ago??? I saw this at least a few decades ago…
Biggest problem with this test was the teeny weenie little plane that smashed into all that concrete.
as the 9/11 attacks have reinforced what was said about this many many years ago, smash a big ol’ planed filled with fuel and watch the for the real results…
might be more interesting to use some low radioactive material inside heated to the same temperature that you find in a reactor to see if any leaks really occure. that should get you better results if what really happens..
untill they do this they have nothing on the saftey of a reactor.
#1 “Thanks US GOV for sitting on your ass for 30 years while energy self sufficiency gets delayed in favor of corporate welfare.”
You mean “Thanks to all the Environmentalists who threw-up so many roadblocks to any new license applications – that utilities eventually stopped even trying to build nuke plants…”
What’s missing here is after-collision shots of the remaining wall, so we could see the amount of damage and possibly evaluate the scaled-up effect of a jumbo jet impact.
In addition to #1’s comments:
First of all if a passenger sized airliner (think 747 and up) hit a wall, it would be going in excess of 500 mph, it would not be going straight into it at a 90 degree angle, and there would be a LOT of flammable material flying all over the place. Furthermore, the mass of the engines would smash right through that puny wall and then right through the core of the plant & would deffinately disrupt the fission chain. aka KAA-BOOOOM.
Secondly, there needs to be some kind of reference in the film – they SAY its going at 500 mph, but there should be some speeding cars or a racetrack in the background for some comparison. Sure as hell doesnt look like no 500 mph to me.
If it WAS a jet fighter that was to crash into a nuke power plant there would likely be some ordinance on the plane. I didnt see any missles getting kerloded.
Concrete < Huge steel bunker.
This is the dumbest test ever.
Jets are made to be as lightweight as possible… they are mostly air with some skin and stuff to hold the skin together. If it is true that the engines were removed and there was no fuel in the aircraft, the test amounts to just plain fraud.
The twin towers survived jumbo jet strikes just fine… it was the fire afterwards that did the serious damage.
Remember, the major nuclear disasters in history all all due to inside factors, none of them due to outside events.
I am a monkey’s uncle if Google can save us from the impending energy crisis.
Google are smart people, but do they really have experts in power generation and distribution? I would be surprised.
Power generation is not search algorithms, it is electo/thermo/nuclear/solid-state engineering and physics. Bright people have been working up ideas in these areas for a hundred years.
Just because Google crushed AltaVista doesn’t mean all the worlds experts suddenly work there. That thinking is equivalent to thinking Bell Labs cornered the market on smart people in the 60s. Hardly. Bell Labs did not send people to the Moon.
I am proclaiming it right here and now: There Exists a “Google” Bubble!
Anyway, I don’t expect a magic energy bullet to be developed, unless someone has new ideas about Fusion power. We already know what the abundant stores of energy are: nuclear fission, coal, petroleum & gas, and to a lesser degree, water, wind, solar, geothermal. We know how to generate electrical power: turbines primarily, but perhaps some direct-conversion (fuel-cell like) means could be developed at the power-plant scale. Distribution would benefit from room temperature super conduction, but the retrofit cost to the nations power grid would have a very long payback period. Unless Google is ready to spend a hundred billion on R&D, I don’t see anything productive coming from them.
More than likely the terrorists would use a land vehicle, packed with explosives. And just ram it into the reactor building and detonate the thing. All the nuclear industry would have to do to prevent this, is start putting up crash barriers. Like they have in front of drug store entrances and banks. One of my local grocery stores just finished its “crash barrier” facade. Though they didn’t tell the public, that’s what it was. But I’ll bet money that no nuclear power plant has yet to do any such damn thing, to improve its security. But their owner always want to build more plants, on the cheap! So they resurrected this old test footage, to prove the old design works. Maybe.
Unless They’ve come up with a plan to handle nuclear waste (burying it in the desert is as stupid as the drums of waste rotting in Monterey’s bay) ; This is just one more batty idea from the people who stand to make huge profits of the industry.
Waiting for the ad that tries to sell the idea of a third eye on your kid
Unless They’ve come up with a plan to handle nuclear waste (burying it in the desert is as stupid as the drums of waste rotting in Monterey’s bay)
Yucca Mountain is like it says, a mountain. It’s not just being buried in the desert, as you say. Come up with a better idea and you can make millions.
#5
“You mean “Thanks to all the Environmentalists who threw-up so many roadblocks…”
I don’t know what poster #1 meant; but I am eternally thankful for the environmentalists. They are the only advocates for this planet.
Please stop swallowing the corporate BS without evaluating it. Do some crtical reading for goodness sake.
BTW – President G.W. Bush finally said that he believes in global climate change. Hmmmmm. I’ll have to reconsider my position on it.
#13 – Interesting. Not that I understand the fusion concepts in this process, mind you.
The containment structure would become increasingly radioactive over time, contrary to the blogger’s assertion, because the boron-11 and proton reaction produces neutrons 0.1% of the time (Wiki).
More interestingly, direct conversion of boron-11+proton process’ x-ray emissions into electricity would be possible, according to Wiki.
Whether the fusion power brass ring can be clasped is still an open question. It looks increasingly close, but how close?
But, will it blend?
#11 – Protected is the same as undetected? Are you an idiot?
#7 You ever heard of “slow motion”. Or do you really think that if they shoved a plane into a concrete wall at three miles per hour that pieces would S-L-O-W-L-Y fly into the air?
They did this test ages ago as another poster pointed out (back in the 80’s as I recall).
“The U.S. Sandia National Laboratories conducted and filmed the test in 1988.
“In 1988 Sandia National Laboratories in USA demonstrated the unequal distribution of energy absorption that occurs when an aircraft impacts a massive, hardened target. The test involved a rocket-propelled F4 Phantom jet (about 27 tonnes, with both engines close together in the fuselage) hitting a 3.7m thick slab of concrete at 765 km/h. This was to see whether a proposed Japanese nuclear power plant could withstand the impact of a heavy aircraft. It showed how most of the collision energy goes into the destruction of the aircraft itself – about 96% of the aircraft’s kinetic energy went into the its destruction and some penetration of the concrete, while the remaining 4% was dissipated in accelerating the 700-tonne slab. The maximum penetration of the concrete in this experiment was 60 mm, but comparison with fixed reactor containment needs to take account of the 4% of energy transmitted to the slab.”
“From Sandia National Laboratories website:
Footage of 1988 rocket-sled test.
“F4 test videostream – The purpose of the test was to determine the impact force, versus time, due to the impact, of a complete F-4 Phantom — including both engines — onto a massive, essentially rigid reinforced concrete target (3.66 meters thick). Previous tests used F-4 engines at similar speeds. The test was not intended to demonstrate the performance (survivability) of any particular type of concrete structure to aircraft impact. The impact occurred at the nominal velocity of 215 meters per second (about 480 mph). The mass of the jet fuel was simulated by water; the effects of fire following such a collision was not a part of the test. The test established that the major impact force was from the engines. The test was performed by Sandia National Laboratories under terms of a contract with the Muto Institute of Structural Mechanics, Inc., of Tokyo. “
So apparently it DID have the engines. I’d read (proabably on rec.aviation.military) that they’d removed them for the test.
“Yucca Mountain is like it says, a mountain.”.
No it’s a ridge line and a desert and just a plain dumb idea. If you need further proof Bush supports it and the person by that name who plays at being president hasn’t been right about anything (except for the fact that he won’t go hunting with his VP.)
#18
What do you suggest, we launch the radioactive waste into the sun? Or will it’s pollute it’s environment as well? What’s your solution to radioactive waste? (And please, nothing so ignorant as “don’t make any”.)
#17 – thanks for not formatting that post so it took up three times more space that it had to.
I appreciate it
#20 Looks the same as all the rest of the posts over here.
There are lots of comments regarding 747’s crashing into concrete and the amount of fuel on such aircraft. But why is that important? Is concrete flammable? No. Could jet fuel melt the reinforcing material, no. Jet fuel, in a crash, hits it’s top temperature for only a fraction of a second then burns at much lower temperatures.
But I suspect that any second now we’ll be getting off topic, so I’ll leave it there.
This is scary – “Unfortunately, most of the nuclear material stored at a nuclear power plant is not in the containment building, but in the spent fuel pools, which do not have significant containment. A jet crashing into the spent fuel pool could displace all of the cooling water, allowing for either a fire or even criticality and sending tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere, creating a Chernobyl-like disaster.”
I am going to do more research on this because it interests me, but that is really crazy if its true because nuclear waste plants should have better containment all around.