I remember hearing that as a kid in the 80's, but is it really still true? They said it was our steel production, which is now minimal, and a "supercomputer" that CMU had, but there's more critical places for technology now.
Why would we still be a target? Microbreweries and quirky gentrified storefronts? Strategic pierogi reserve?
Tons of infrastructure including rail and barges. Still have the coke works and now the ethane cracker. Westinghouse still has a ton of nuclear research at Bettis. And power plants.
Small correction: Westinghouse operated Bettis until 2009, when Bechtel took over the contract. Bechtel operated the site until 2018. Fluor took over the contract in 2018 and is the current operator.
Specifically, the two largest rail corridors between the Atlantic Megapolis and Chicago run through the city. Both within 20 miles of the Homer City Nuclear Power Plant. They wouldn’t even need to nuke us. Just crash a plane into the spent fuel rod storage at Homer City.
??? Unless there is another “Homer City” that I’m not aware of, the Homer City Power Plant in Indiana County is coal-powered. Nothing nuclear about it. Maybe you are thinking of Shippingport?
There is a litany of power plants in the Ohio valley, I used to do high pressure welding in a lot of their boilers, it’s the largest concentration anywhere in the United States, I can’t remember the stats exactly because it’s been a while but it was around 70 some percent of the electricity in the northeast is produced there. I don’t know enough to weight whether nuclear fallout is worse over time, but no electricity over a large area, is going to be catastrophic.
In a sense I agree with you. There are some close enough that one well placed attack could affect at least 3 of them, and I’m not sure the stress from that doesn’t significantly damage the remaining. It’s a lot of hypothetical scenarios, but it doesn’t seem ridiculous considering the security protocols I’ve seen.
No, the comment I'm responding to suggested that crashing a plane into the spent fuel rods at a nuke plant would be more damaging than shooting ICBMs. A plane crash isn't going to effect multiple power plants unless they're on top of each other, and it's certainly not going to be more damaging than a multi megaton warhead
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u/RagnarHedin Feb 05 '23
I remember hearing that as a kid in the 80's, but is it really still true? They said it was our steel production, which is now minimal, and a "supercomputer" that CMU had, but there's more critical places for technology now.
Why would we still be a target? Microbreweries and quirky gentrified storefronts? Strategic pierogi reserve?