"force multiplier"

ok, jsut reading stuff and came accross this....


The "American Hiroshima" had occurred exactly as the terrorists had been saying it was going to happen for the past three years. The image of a broad daylight mushroom cloud over a World Trade center less New York skyline was now a reality. That image flashed around the world within seconds, New York was destroyed and four million Americans were dead - including 2 million children just like Trevor Blaylock. Three days later a second bomb was detonated 2000 feet over the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant a mere 45 miles south of Washington DC. The Jihadists had demonstrated the military concept of a "force multiplier" with the selection of this target.

this was on homelandsecurity.com as a hypothetical story, im sure many of you have read it.

anyway the question is, would detonating a tactical nuke over a nuclear power plant really cause the extensive amount of damage 45 miles away? or would it be jsut as effective to detonate it within a major city?

save the comments on being stupid or what not, just wondering how much more damage would be caused by this. again i do not believe this american hiroshima will ever occur by terrorist, i dont think they have nukes, and i strongly feel they will never have them in the US.

I think there's a public misconception about nuclear power plants. They don't go BOOM! and they are kept inside of pretty thick concrete shells. Sure you'd have a serious radiation problem if you caused one to melt-down, but you might as well detonate the nuke in a town. That way you would destroy the buildings and leave everything radioactive at the same time.

I think the real terror threat is for someone to disrupt the reactor to try and get it to an unstable state such as the one in Chernobyl arrived at. You could then achieve a long-lasting radiation problem without the knowledge or possession of radioactive bombs. If you already had "the bomb" then your best bet would be to just use it on a target.