AMERICA'S
TERRORIST NUCLEAR THREAT TO ITSELF
By Harvey
Wasserman
No sane nation
hands to a wartime enemy atomic weapons set to go off within its own homeland,
and then lights the fuse.
Yet as the bombs
and missiles drop on Afghanistan, the certainty of terror retaliation inside
America has turned our 103 nuclear power plants into weapons of apocalyptic
destruction, just waiting to be used against us.
One or both
planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, could have
easily obliterated the two atomic reactors now operating at Indian Point, about
40 miles up the Hudson.
The catastrophic
devastation would have been unfathomable. But those and a hundred other
American reactors are still running. Security has been heightened. But all are
vulnerable to another sophisticated terror attack aimed at perpetrating the
unthinkable.
Indian Point
Unit One was shut long ago by public outcry. But Units 2 & 3 have operated
since the 1970s. Back then there was talk of requiring reactor containment
domes to be strong enough to withstand a jetliner crash. But the biggest jets
were far smaller than the ones that fly today. Nor did those early calculations
account for the jet fuel whose hellish fire melted the critical steel supports
that ultimately brought down the Trade Center.
Had one or both
those jets hit one or both the operating reactors at Indian Point, the ensuing
cloud of radiation would have dwarfed the ones at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl.
The intense
radioactive heat within today's operating reactors is the hottest anywhere on
the planet. So are the hellish levels of radioactivity.
Because Indian
Point has operated so long, its accumulated radioactive burden far exceeds that
of Chernobyl, which ran only four years before it exploded.
Some believe the
WTC jets could have collapsed or breached either of the Indian Point
containment domes. But at very least the massive impact and intense jet fuel
fire would destroy the human ability to control the plants' functions. Vital
cooling systems, backup power generators and communications networks would
crumble.
Indeed, Indian
Point Unit One was shut because activists warned that its lack of an emergency
core cooling system made it an unacceptable risk. The government ultimately
agreed.
But today
terrorist attacks could destroy those same critical cooling and control systems
that are vital to not only the Unit Two and Three reactor cores, but to the
spent fuel pools that sit on site.
The assault
would not require a large jet. The safety systems are extremely complex and
virtually indefensible. One or more could be wiped out with a wide range of
easily deployed small aircraft, ground-based weapons, truck bombs or even
chemical/biological assaults aimed at the operating work force. Dozens of US
reactors have repeatedly failed even modest security tests over the years. Even
heightened wartime standards cannot guarantee protection of the vast, supremely
sensitive controls required for reactor safety.
Without
continous monitoring and guaranteed water flow, the thousands of tons of
radioactive rods in the cores and the thousands more stored in those fragile
pools would rapidly melt into super-hot radioactive balls of lava that would
burn into the ground and the water table and, ultimately, the Hudson.
Indeed, a
jetcrash like the one on 9/11 or other forms of terrorist assault at Indian
Point could yield three infernal fireballs of molten radioactive lava burning
through the earth and into the aquifer and the river. Striking water they would
blast gigantic billows of horribly radioactive steam into the atmosphere.
Prevailing winds from the north and west might initially drive these clouds of
mass death downriver into New York City and east into Westchester and Long
Island.
But at Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl, winds ultimately shifted around the compass to
irradiate all surrounding areas with the devastating poisons released by the
on-going fiery torrent. At Indian Point, thousands of square miles would have
been saturated with the most lethal clouds ever created or imagined, depositing
relentless genetic poisons that would kill forever.
In nearby
communities like Buchanan, Nyack, Monsey and scores more, infants and small
children would quickly die en masse. Virtually all pregnant women would
spontaneously abort, or ultimately give birth to horribly deformed offspring.
Ghastly sores, rashes, ulcerations and burns would afflict the skin of
millions. Emphysema, heart attacks, stroke, multiple organ failure, hair loss,
nausea, inability to eat or drink or swallow, diarrhea and incontinance,
sterility and impotence, asthma, blindness, and more would kill thousands on
the spot, and doom hundreds of thousands if not millions. A terrible metallic
taste would afflict virtually everyone downwind in New York, New Jersey and New
England, a ghoulish curse similar to that endured by the fliers who dropped the
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaskai, by those living downwind from nuclear
bomb tests in the south seas and Nevada, and by victims caught in the
downdrafts from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Then comes the
abominable wave of cancers, leukemias, lymphomas, tumors and hellish diseases
for which new names will have to be invented, and new dimensions of agony will
beg description.
Indeed, those
who survived the initial wave of radiation would envy those who did not.
Evacuation would
be impossible, but thousands would die trying. Bridges and highways would
become killing fields for those attempting to escape to destinations that would
soon enough become equally deadly as the winds shifted.
Attempts to
quench the fires would be futile. At Chernobyl, pilots flying helicopters that
dropped boron on the fiery core died in droves. At Indian Point, such missions
would be a sure ticket to death. Their utility would be doubtful as the molten
cores rage uncontrolled for days, weeks and years, spewing ever more
devastation into the eco-sphere. More than 800,000 Soviet draftees were forced
through Chernobyl's seething remains in a futile attempt to clean it up. They
are dying in droves. Who would now volunteer for such an American task force?
The radioactive
cloud from Chernobyl blanketed the vast Ukraine and Belarus landscape, then
carried over Europe and into the jetstream, surging through the west coast of
the United States within ten days, carrying across our northern tier, circling
the globe, then coming back again.
The radioactive
clouds from Indian Point would enshroud New York, New Jersey, New England, and
carry deep into the Atlantic and up into Canada and across to Europe and around
the globe again and again.
The immediate
damage would render thousands of the world's most populous and expensive square
miles permanently uninhabitable. All five boroughs of New York City would be an
apocalyptic wasteland. The World Trade Center would be rendered as unusable and
even more lethal by a jet crash at Indian Point than it was by the direct hits
of 9/11. All real estate and economic value would be poisonously radioactive
throughout the entire region. Irreplaceable trillions in human capital would be
forever lost.
As at Three Mile
Island, where thousands of farm and wild animals died in heaps, and as at
Chernobyl, where soil, water and plant life have been hopelessly irradiated,
natural eco-systems on which human and all other life depends would be
permanently and irrevocably destroyed,
Spiritually,
psychologically, financially, ecologically, our nation would never recover.
This is what we
missed by a mere forty miles near New York City on September 11. Now that we
are at war, this is what could be happening as you read this.
There are 103 of
these potential Bombs of the Apocalypse now operating in the United States.
They generate just 18% of America's electricity, just 8% of our total energy.
As with reactors elsewhere, the two at Indian Point have both been off-line for
long periods of time with no appreciable impact on life in New York. Already an
extremely expensive source of electricity, the cost of attempting to defend
these reactors will put nuclear energy even further off the competitive scale.
Since its
deregulation crisis, California---already the nation's second-most efficient
state---cut further into its electric consumption by some 15%. Within a year
the US could cheaply replace with increased efficiency all the reactors now so
much more expensive to operate and protect.
Yet, as the
bombs fall and the terror escalates, Congress is fast-tracking a form of legal
immunity to protect the operators of reactors like Indian Point from liability
in case of a meltdown or terrorist attack.
Why is our
nation handing its proclaimed enemies the weapons of our own mass destruction,
and then shielding from liability the companies that insist on continuing to
operate them?
Do we take this
war seriously? Are we committed to the survival of our nation?
If so, the
ticking reactor bombs that could obliterate the very core of our life and of
all future generations must be shut down.
----------
Harvey Wasserman
is author of THE LAST ENERGY WAR and co-author of KILLING OUR OWN: THE DISASTER
OF AMERICA'S EXPERIENCE WITH ATOMIC RADIATION.
The New York
Times
November 9, 2001
Groups Warn of
Calamity if A-Plants Are Attacked
By ROBERT WORTH
Environmentalists
and public officials, including three members of Congress
and nine members
of the State Legislature, presented a petition to the
Nuclear
Regulatory Commission yesterday, warning that the Indian Point
nuclear plants,
35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan on the Hudson River,
are vulnerable
to terrorist attack and should be shut down until they can be
made safe.
A group of those
who signed the petition, including Andrew M. Cuomo, the
former secretary
of Housing and Urban Development, and Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., the
chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, an
environmental
group in Garrison, N.Y., gathered on the steps of New York's
City Hall to
stress their position.
"If the
American Airlines Flight 11 that flew down the Hudson River had,
instead of
hitting the twin towers in New York, banked left and hit the twin
towers of Indian
Point, we would have a much more dire situation than we're
facing
now," Mr. Kennedy said.
Security has
been high at the plants since Sept. 11, with National Guard
troops standing
guard and Coast Guard cutters running round- the-clock
patrols on the
Hudson River. Federal officials say that there is no need to
close the plants
and that safety improvements have been made since Sept. 11.
But the
petitioners, who included two members of the City Council and more
than two dozen
state and local officials from the area around the plants, said
those measures
were not enough. They said a terrorist attack could cause a
disastrous
release of radiation at Indian Point, whose two reactors are in the
most densely
populated area around any nuclear plant in the country. About
20 million
people live within a 50-mile radius of the plants.
Jim Steets, a
spokesman for Entergy, the company that owns the plant, said
that closing it
would accomplish nothing, and that it would be far harder for a
jet to hit the
plants than a large target like the World Trade Center. He added
that even a
direct hit would not necessarily cause a meltdown that would
result in a wide
release of radiation.
"The
evacuation plan does consider a worst-case scenario, and even then
you would have 8
to 10 hours to evacuate," Mr. Steets said.
The evacuation
plan, which is reviewed every two years by the federal
government and
is based on the removal of people within a 10-mile radius of
the plants, has
come under fire in recent weeks, with many local officials
saying publicly
that they do not believe it is practical.
The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, in reviewing safety measures after the
Sept. 11 attack,
is trying to determine what would happen if a large aircraft
were to hit a
nuclear plant like Indian Point, said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman
for the agency.
But Mr. Kennedy
and others said yesterday that federal regulators had never
tested the
security of the spent fuel at the plant, which contains far more
radioactive
material than the reactors themselves but is not protected by a
containment
structure, as the reactors are.
Those concerns
have been echoed at plants elsewhere in the country in
recent weeks. On
Nov. 1, the House Energy and Commerce Committee
voted to require
the N.R.C. to review the potential for attacks on nuclear
plants.
Several speakers
at City Hall yesterday emphasized that although safety was
a concern at all
of the nation's nuclear plants, it made sense to shut down
Indian Point
because of its proximity to the New York metropolitan area and
because use of
the plants is less necessary during the winter, when energy is
not as likely to
be in short supply.