EMP security

Feds fear EMP 'meltdown' of nuclear power plants

The federal government’s new focus on preventing disaster in a natural or terrorist electromagnetic pulse attack is drawing attention to a lack of testing and preparation at the nation’s nuclear power plants, where a resulting meltdown could cause radiation deaths.

Tucked into the back of a new report from the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force compiled to highlight the EMP threat to U.S. infrastructure and military installations, the nation’s nuclear regulators admitted that the electric generating plants are not prepared for an attack.

What’s more, they don’t know how deadly an attack would be or how far the radioactive “plume” from a meltdown would extend and suggested instead that deaths would first come from an inability to find food and clean water.

“If all engineered and proceduralized mitigation measures failed and a meltdown were to occur, there is a very large uncertainty in off-site consequences,” said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in response to the concerns raised in the report, provided to Secrets.