Re: URGENT REQUEST TO SHUT DOWN CALIFORNIA'S NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS -- September 17th, 2001
To: graydavis@governor.ca.gov, "Barbara Boxer, Senator (CA, D)" <senator@boxer.senate.gov>
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Don't waste vital resources protecting our nuclear power plants!
Cc: president@whitehouse.gov, "Russell Wise, NRC" <rxw@nrc.gov>, "Elmo Collins" <eec@nrc.gov>, "Pat Gwynn" <tpg@nrc.gov>, "Clanon, Paul" <pac@cpuc.ca.gov>, "Ajello, Julian E." <JEA@cpuc.ca.gov>, "Wong, Zee Z." <czw@cpuc.ca.gov>, "Clark, Richard W." <rwc@cpuc.ca.gov>, "NRC" <the.secretary@hq.doe.gov>
Re: URGENT REQUEST TO SHUT DOWN CALIFORNIA'S NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS -- September 17th, 2001
Dear Governor Davis:
"If you postulate the risk of a jumbo jet full of fuel, it is clear that their design was not conceived to withstand such an impact." This quote refers to Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) and comes from a spokesperson for the International Atomic Energy Commission, speaking in Vienna, Austria this week (see AP/NYT article shown below).
Governor Davis: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, and our own Public Utilities Commission will not act to protect us. You must step in and do so.
There is only one sure way to reduce the risk at NPPs: Shut them down and move the nuclear waste to undisclosed locations underground. (I am not advocating Yucca Mountain as a solution to our nuclear waste problems, but I am advocating facing the reality about the immediate dangers.)
Protecting NPPs with weaponry fails on at least four counts:
1) It might not work, and if it doesn't, the devastation would last for millennia and the death toll and suffering would be unspeakable.
2) Using trained troops for this purpose takes those troops away from other defensive positions where the country could use them desperately.
3) Having so much weaponry so close to the reactors is unsafe as well. "Friendly fire" is an extremely serious risk in any firefight.
4) It's extremely expensive to protect the plants and the expense will not go away as time goes by. We will need to protect the NPPs from this day forward.
I understand that shutting NPPs down will not allow our security forces to abandon them right away. We can't simply move the radioactive waste away from the reactors immediately. Some of waste is still too "hot" (literally and radioactively) to be transported. But even in this time of emergency, we have to think long-term. We have to start cooling the reactors. We have to stop manufacturing High Level Nuclear Waste which just creates additional targets. Right now the radioactive waste is stored practically completely out in the open, vulnerable to even an accidental private plane crash or a few determined suicide bombers. We must SCRAM the reactors (insert the control rods). We must rethink our priorities. Time has run out.
I know that we don't know where to put the waste, and that's certainly a problem. BUT, a non-operational reactor is STILL vastly less likely to melt down in case of a terrorist attack, tsunami, earthquake, tornado, fire, flood, explosion, asteroid, bad welds, poorly trained operators, and the other 1,000 things that can go wrong.
Governor, we citizens CAN conserve enough electricity to compensate for shutting the NPPs down. Maybe not without some hardship, but surely we can do it, especially if it is an effort in which the entire nation participates.
Boeing does not need to build any more commercial airliners. We don't want them, we don't need them. Boeing should build wind turbines instead, starting immediately. We can get rid of these nuclear power plants and switch to renewable energy sources -- please help California to do so.
PLEASE SHUT THE NUKES DOWN NOW!!!!!
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
Concerned citizen / independent researcher
Carlsbad, CA
Note to readers: Please distribute this message to others -- especially Californians. Please contact our government officials over and over until they listen. If one state shuts the nukes down, perhaps they all will.
Attachments: 2 related articles posted on the DOEWatch forum
===============================================================
>>>>> AP ARTICLE PUBLISHED TODAY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES >>>>>
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Nuclear.html?searchpv=apon
September 17, 2001
Security Tightens at Nuclear Plants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:47 a.m. ET
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Security is being tightened at the world's nuclear power plants, an international watchdog agency said Monday, but it conceded that little can be done to shield a nuclear facility from a direct hit by an airliner.
Most nuclear power plants were built during the 1960s and 1970s, and like the World Trade Center, they were designed to withstand only accidental impacts from the smaller aircraft widely used at the time, the International Atomic Energy Agency said as it opened its annual conference.
``If you postulate the risk of a jumbo jet full of fuel, it is clear that their design was not conceived to withstand such an impact,'' spokesman David Kyd said.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was among delegates from 132 nations who opened the conference with calls to better safeguard nuclear plants and keep nuclear materials out of terrorists' hands.
Abraham brought a message from President Bush to the Vienna-based IAEA, urging the agency to keep pace with ``the real and growing threat of nuclear proliferation.''
The world ``must ensure that nuclear materials are never used as weapons of terror,'' Abraham said. ``We cannot assume that tomorrow's terrorist acts will mirror those we've just experienced.''
In the wake of last week's attacks in New York and Washington, governments have tightened security outside nuclear power and radioactive waste facilities worldwide.
But Japan, which is heavily dependent on nuclear energy and has 52 nuclear plants, warned Monday that although tighter security is needed, nothing can shield the plants from attacks by missiles or aircraft.
Conference delegates, who began Monday with a minute of silence and a song from the Vienna Boy's Choir in memory of the victims of the attacks on the United States, planned to meet behind closed doors Monday and Tuesday on ways to improve plant security.
In the West, nuclear power plants were designed more with ground vehicle attacks in mind, Kyd said. Although many were designed to withstand a glancing blow from a small commercial jetliner, a direct hit at high speed by a modern jumbo jet ``could create a Chernobyl situation,'' said a U.S. official who declined to be identified.
But the buildings that house nuclear reactors themselves are far smaller targets than the Pentagon posed, and it would be extremely difficult for a terrorist to mount a direct hit at an angle that could unleash a catastrophic chain of events, Kyd said.
If a nuclear power plant were hit by an airliner, the reactor would not explode, but such a strike could destroy the plant's cooling systems. That could cause the nuclear fuel rods to overheat and produce a steam explosion that could release lethal radioactivity into the atmosphere.
<<<<< END OF AP ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES <<<<<<
============================================================
Comments by Russell Hoffman on the above article:
Kyd is still an apologist for the Nuclear Industry, despite his chilling and undoubtedly well-informed statements which I have quoted above. Smaller targets? Sure, they are smaller than the Pentagon. But let's be realistic. The buildings are in fact HUGE targets. They are often clustered in groups of two or three or more. And perhaps worst, numerous items in the surrounding areas are also capable of catastrophic releases of radioactivity!
SHUT THE NUKES DOWN NOW!
-- rdh
==========================================================
>>>>> THIS WAS POSTED TO A NEWSGROUP I SUBSCRIBE TO: >>>>>
To: "NECNP" <necnp@necnp.org>
Cc: "NRC CONCERNS" <nrc_concerns@yahoogroups.com>,
"Maine Enviro Policy Institute" <willsugg@yahoo.com>,
"DOEWATCH" <doewatch@yahoogroups.com>
From: "Raymond Shadis" <shadis@ime.net>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 10:42:43 -0400
Reply-To: "Raymond Shadis" <shadis@ime.net>
Subject: [DOEWatch] Purely Precautionary, No Threat, Prudent, Classified Recommendation
Just because you are brief doesn't mean you can't also be mealymouthed.....and here is an NRC Office of Public Affairs press release to prove it. Ray
No. 01-109
September 11, 2001
NRC URGES INCREASED SECURITY
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, purely as a precaution, has recommended that all nuclear power plants, non-power reactors, nuclear fuel facilities and gaseous diffusion plants go to the highest level of security. Details of the heightened security are classified.
While there has been no credible general or specific threats to any of these facilities, the recommendation was considered prudent, given the acts of terrorism in New York City and, in Washington, D.C.
###
<<<<< END OF SECOND ATTACHMENT TO LETTER TO CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR GRAY DAVIDS <<<<<
==================================================================
This web page has been presented on the World Wide Web by:
The Animated Software Company
http://www.animatedsoftware.com
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
First posted September 22nd, 2001.
Webwiz: Russell D. Hoffman