Letters to the Editor -- Welcome, Morocco, to the nuclear world!

To: Editors@ArabicNews.com
Cc: opa@nrc.gov
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Letters to the Editor -- Welcome, Morocco, to the nuclear world!
(re: http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010921/2001092122.html )
Date: September 24th, 2001

To the Editor:

I have a message for the people of Morocco:

You will rue the day you decided to let the Nuclear Age enter your borders.

Even without a catastrophic event such as a terrorist attack, an earthquake, or a hurricane, all nuclear facilities endanger the citizens of the world, especially those who live closest to those nuclear facilities.  Citizens in America will some day get our nuclear plants closed, and closed forever.  Be it before one melts down or after.  Before a terrorist attack or after.  Before a catastrophe or after.  And it all started with a few "research" reactors.  Every reactor, no matter how small, is a target.  So welcome, Morocco, to the nuclear world!  You can have it!

I hope the citizens of Morocco understand that the debate about nuclear power is stifled in the United States.  I hope the debate in Morocco included a discussion of the loss of civil liberties these reactors inevitably lead to.  I hope the debate included a discussion about the lies the government ends up telling the people, about accidental releases, and the cumulative effects of nuclear pollution.  I hope the debate included a discussion of what would be done with the waste.  Did America promise to take it?

Please see this article about what it's like with piles and piles of nuclear waste in America, radioactive scum that we don't know what to do with.  Read about the anger in Nevada -- and this was BEFORE the WTC tragedy.  Imagine how angry the people in Nevada must be now:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/ca2001af.htm

Please look at what happened to our supposedly free American press, which censors all discussion on this issue, as if it were a Patriotic Duty to lie to the people.  Please notice how practically no one actually watches over the nuclear power plant licensees to ensure they are operating their plants safely, as witness the litany of accidents at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station just this year alone, including explosions, fires, dropped loads, and maintenance SNAFUs galore (San Onofre happens to be the plant I live near, so it's the one I write about.  Such occurrences happen at every plant.)
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/index.htm

Those in power refuse to listen, no matter how logical, cohesive, or accurate our arguments are!  Time and again, events have proven that the "anti-nuclear" faction, which is to say, the logical and reasonable faction, was right.  We make claims, and time proves us to be correct.  There is a bull-headed Nuclear Mafia here, who is in control of trillions of dollars of industrial production in America.  It is misguided money, every cent of it.  They often own a variety of non-nuclear strongholds of income as well, like oil and coal supplies.  With large government agencies letting the private companies get away with -- literally -- murder, we are in quite a mess here.  The money cannot be redirected from the outside -- that is, by the citizens of this supposedly free country, because of the intricacies of the financial markets these companies have invested in.  So we are hamstrung to rid ourselves of this menace.

So congratulations, Morocco, on your new "research reactor".  You will rue it some day.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, California, USA
(Full contact information appears below)

Included below are three items:
1) URL for an answer to the latest U.S. Government nuclear propaganda.
2) Four reasons military protection of nuclear power plants is not the answer
3) The article at your web site which this letter responds to

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Please visit this URL for a response to our Nuclear Regulatory Commission's latest propaganda, and see what sort of lies your people will be told by your own nuclear proponents, just as we are being lied to here:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/nrc2001b.htm

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Four reasons military protection of nuclear power plants is not the answer:

1) It might not work, and if it doesn't, the devastation would last for millennia and the death toll could be three or more orders of magnitude worse than what we saw at the World Trade Center.  That means millions dead instead of thousands.  The suffering of those who do not die rapidly but are slowly poisoned by the radiation would be unspeakably horrific.  If you have nuclear power plants, your enemy doesn't need a nuclear bomb.

2) Using highly trained troops for nuclear power plant security takes those troops away from other defensive positions where the country could use them.  There are over 1000 nuclear hotspots in this country, including nuclear power plants (103), research reactors (~40), training reactors (several), closed reactors (~50), weapons manufacturing facilities (dozens) and nuclear waste dumps (lots and lots).  Hanford alone is about the size of a small state, and just has a fence around it -- very difficult to protect.  All nuclear sites are vulnerable to one degree or another, most of them are extremely vulnerable.

3) Having so much weaponry so close to the reactors is unsafe prima facie.  "Friendly fire" is an extremely serious risk in any firefight.  Also, there is no guarantee that those manning the guns will do what is expected of them.  Timothy McVeigh was a U.S. soldier before he became a terrorist in 1995.  So was the lunatic who stole a tank in San Diego in 1996, and drove it unobstructed for about 10 miles (he tried to jump the highway barrier and run over oncoming highway traffic, but got the tank stuck midway).  In 1997 an Air Force pilot on a training mission suddenly broke formation, dropped below radar, and flew his A-10 Warthog 800 miles (from Arizona to Colorado), where it ran out of fuel and crashed into the side of a mountain.  The Depleted Uranium bullets the Warthog "tank buster" aircraft normally carries could slice through a Dry Fuel Storage Cask like a knife through butter.  The plane was carrying four 500-pound bombs and magnesium flares (used for decoys for heat-sinking missiles).  An attack on a nuclear power plant by a single A-10 Warthog would be devastating.

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 nuclear power plants from this day forward.  Thus, they are not and never will be economical to run (they never were before).  And if they aren't even economical, why in the world should we continue to risk the dangers they pose?

-- Russell D. Hoffman, Concerned Citizen, Carlsbad, California, USA, Planet Earth

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From: http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010921/2001092122.html

Morocco and US sign agreement on peaceful use of nuclear techniques
Morocco-USA, Politics, 9/21/2001 Morocco and the United State signed in Rabat on Thursday an agreement on the use of nuclear techniques for peaceful ends.

Under the agreement, US company "General Atomics" will complete the construction in Morocco of the 1st nuclear reactor that will make it possible to conduct advanced research on materials, nuclear medicine and other farming and industrial applications.

Morocco will join 23 other countries which use reactors for general atomic scientific research, said US ambassador, Margaret Tutwiller who signed the agreement with industry, trade, energy and mining minister, Mustapha Mansouri.

Morocco, which is member of the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1957, has adhered to all international treaties and conventions related to nuclear energy, mainly the non-proliferation nuclear treaty.

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For more information please visit:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/index.htm

Learn about the effects of nuclear weapons here:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke_war.htm
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The Animated Software Company
http://www.animatedsoftware.com
Mail to: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
First posted September 30th, 2001.

Webwiz: Russell D. Hoffman