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Last updated on August 8th, 2017 at 01:14 pm
The SMH reports:
Stolen Australian Army rocket launchers are in the hands of a home-grown terrorist group which planned to use them to attack Sydney’s Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, police allege …
The Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, said a man arrested in Leumeah yesterday and charged with possessing stolen weapons was linked to a group that had planned to attack buildings in Sydney, including the reactor.
Mr Keelty would not publicly link the man, Taha Abdul-Rahman, directly to a plan to target the reactor, referring only to “evidence of a proposed target”, and saying: “Clearly, there was a plan for the use of the weapon.”
This bunch presumably believes an attack on the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor would cause some kind of China Syndrome hellmelt. As it happens, the reactor core at Lucas Heights contains only 280 grams of uranium (mostly used to produce isotopes for medical purposes, including cancer therapy). Compare Lucas Heights to the research reactor at France’s Institut Laue-Langevin, which contains nine whole kilograms of nuclear fuel—just one per cent of that found in a power reactor.
Still, the word “nuclear” is involved, so Lucas Heights is obviously deadly.
UPDATE. Russell repairs my hopeless maths:
It is 280g of uranium per fuel elements with 25 fuel elements in the core, ie 7kg of uranium.
Still below that French place, and still waaaay below anything in a power reactor.