The Nuclear Plant near Munich

German authorities are planning to use artificial fog to protect a nuclear power plant against terrorist attacks.

The idea has been proposed after details from a secret report emerged about severe lacks of security at the Isar 1 plant near Landshut in Bavaria.

According to the report, the plant isn't protected from an attack by a small passenger plane.

Landshut mayor Josef Deimer is calling for Isar 1 to be switched off. He is citing an incident in which a Mirage fighter jet crashed only seconds away from the plant several years ago.

But Bavarian minister of the environment Werner Schnappauf wants to have the plant hidden behind an artificial wall of fog so would-be attackers can't aim for it.

"We expect that camouflaging the plant with artificial fog will be an adequate means", Mr Schnappauf told Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

In addition to protests from opposition parties in Bavaria, politicians in neighbouring Austria are also campaigning against the fog wall plans.

Green Party MP Peter Pilz is threatening to hand out copies of the confidential report to Bavarian citizens so they will fight the plans, regardless of legal consequences this might bring.

They had this in New Scientist a couple of weeks back, they interviewed a few experts on building fogging systems and the basic reponse was a fog wall might work if:

a: You can get 20 minutes warning of the attack to turn all the fog generators on.

b: You don't mind drowning anyone who happens to be outside the building at the time, due to the amount of water needed to hide an entire power station.

and

c: You'd better hope its not too windy.

I wish I could convince the Bavarian government to fund my mad scientist schemes the way the guy who came up with this did.

Mad Scientist scheme No. 1: Rocket propelled U-Bahn.

How small of a plane is needed to take out nuclear power plant, anyway? I'd sort of assume the plane would be large enough to sport instruments where a visual wouldn't be needed anyway. GPS works through fog, does it not?

Of course GPS works through fog, otherwise I’m not getting on another commercial plane on my next holidays!!

What another really dumb “anti-terrorist� initiative this is (reminiscent of something the George Dubya admin would come up with)! Furthermore, highlighting the “anti-terrorist� method is actually counter-productive, as 1) it reminds the terrorists not to forget to bring their handy GPS system with them! And 2) it also highlights to would-be terrorists a potentially great plan! They just seem to be handing them out nowadays!

I think that a new chat should be started off on Mad Scientist schemes as Astroboy pointed out! I’m sure money could be better spent elsewhere, actually let me re-phrase that, I know it could!!!

Don't wanna give the potential terrorists any ideas here but, surely if it's sunny as it is prone to be in Bavaria in Summer, surely they would just aim for the fog bank? Unless the German government is planning to create dummy fog banks all over the place?

Got a great plan. See, me and some guys, we set up this anti-aircraft missle launch site on top of the nuclear power plant. Then we set up a LAN wire straight to Jimbo's PS2 handset and let him wait. Give HIM 20 minutes warning and I'll bet he will stave off ANY low flying aircraft that dare to come within the hot radar, GPS, heat sensors that we put up.

Quite right Astroboy. A fog scheme such as this is completely bonkers.

A rocket propelled U-Bahn? Now there's an excellent idea. Ok, so here's a question to get your rocket brain around: at a constant 3g acceleration out of Klinikum Grosshadern, followed by a nearly instantaneous switch over to 3g decceleration from the midpoint (Marienplatz?), what would be the travel time to Garching Hockbruck?

18.44 seconds, assuming a distance of 25km, and travel in a straight line.

Obviously getting up to an acceleration of 3g would be a tricky starting point. I'd imagined the best starting plan would be to add sparklers/flint mechanisms to the back of the trains for that cool 1930's Flash Gordon effect.

Sadly, MVV is its wisdom put a "shuttletrain" in between Frötmanning and Garching Hochbruck for a period of two weeks in late 2002, and it is still running. They obviously saw that they can create an extra job in keeping hte crappy shuttletrain, regardles of the fact that there is no actual line blockages to warrant it, and the commuters hate it. Taking the shuttle into account, your 18.44 seconds would have to be lengthened a little.

Still a good idea though..

The actual distance is 23 km, so taking Don Riina's argument into account the 18.44 seconds may be lengthened just a little bit.