Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by loopback_device 1406 days ago
> Most plants are protected by armed guards. The plant near me has signs on the fence warning that "deadly force is authorized to protect the plant". Is your new issue that the "pools" are dangerous because ...?

The pools aren't dangerous by themselves – I was alluding to some nuclear power plants in Ukraine seeing quite heavy fighting [1]. That's the kind of situation where your armed guards are not present to protect it from nosey civilians.

[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/12/europe/ukraine-zaporizhzh...

1 comments

Many hospitals have enough radioactive isotopes to create some really nasty dirty bombs - yet you never see the same level of discussion around physical security for them; perhaps because most people don't realize just how frequently radioactive isotopes are used for things other than nuclear power? The constant demonization of nuclear power has lead to this pathological loathing that is really shooting us all in the foot.
Hospitals don't usually cause a radioactive disaster if bombed into oblivion – and are also not valid military targets as per Geneva Conventions.

Radioactive isotopes used in medicine have significantly shorter half-lives than the isotopes found in fuel rods. I'm sure you can get something nasty done with them if you wanted to, and there are also enough incidents in that field, but it's not really comparable?

The Geneva Convention seems to have been thrown out of the window in recent conflicts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E2%80%93Syrian_hospita...