FEARS that a hijacked plane could cause a nuclear wipeout if it crashed into the Hartlepool Power Station have been dismissed.

The International Atomic Energy Agency was reported yesterday as saying all of the country's 440 nuclear power stations were vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

But Bob Fenton, a spokesman for British Energy, said that in a US experiment, a jet fighter bomber was flown into a similar size building at 500mph. It only left two marks where the engine hit.

"In a worst case scenario at Hartlepool, if something did crack you wouldn't be looking at another Hiroshima. It's not like an atomic bomb. While it would be a problem, the authorities are capable of dealing with it," he said.

"We have a full emergency plan which we test regularly."

Construction on the Teesside site, which employs more than 400 people, began in 1968 and the plants two reactors came on line in the early 1980s.