Delegates from 132 nations attending an annual International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conference in Vienna, Austria on 17 September urged for tightened security. They also noted the need to make sure nuclear materials are kept out of the hands of terrorists. Governments fearing a suicide jetliner crash at nuclear power plants have tightened security outside nuclear power and radioactive waste facilities worldwide in the aftermath of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. 

According to David Kyd, a spokesman for the IAEA, the architects of the world's nuclear power plants designed to withstand ground vehicle attacks, not airborne. Most nuclear power plants were built during the 1960s and 1970s and were designed to withstand only accidental impacts from smaller aircraft widely used at the time. A US official stated that a direct hit of a nuclear plant by a modern-day jumbo jet traveling at high speed "could result in a Chernobyl situation." 

According to the IAEA, if an airliner hit a nuclear power plant, the reactor would not explode, but the strike could destroy the plant's cooling systems, causing the nuclear fuel storage tanks to overheat and produce a steam explosion that would release lethal radioactivity into the atmosphere. Paul Levanthal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, stated "The problem is that the [nuclear] industry has been in a deep state of denial for many years and they don't want to unduly alarm the public. We feel that the public should be alarmed. We're in a new era, and we must protect these plants in extraordinary ways." (source: AP, 17 September 2001)