[ RadSafe ] Article from San Francisco Chronicle

[Jim Hardeman]

Colleages --
 
The article below appeared on page A-8 of today's San Francisco
Chronicle.
 
URL =
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/11/MNG2OPP22R1.DTL

 
Jim Hardeman
Jim_Hardeman at dnr.state.ga.us 
 
=========
 
Contingencies for nuclear terrorist attack
Government working up plan to prevent chaos in wake of bombing of major
city
 
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer (
mailto:jsterngold at sfchronicle.com )

Friday, May 11, 2007
As concerns grow that terrorists might attack a major American city
with a nuclear bomb, a high-level group of government and military
officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program that
would include the building of bomb shelters, steps to prevent panicked
evacuations and the possible suspension of some civil liberties. 
Many experts say the likelihood of al Qaeda or some other terrorist
group producing a working nuclear weapon with illicitly obtained
weapons-grade fuel is not large, but such a strike would be far more
lethal, frightening and disruptive than the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Not only could the numbers killed and wounded be far higher, but the
explosion could, experts say, ignite widespread fires, shut down most
transportation, halt much economic activity and cause a possible
disintegration of government order. 
The efforts to prepare a detailed blueprint for survival took a step
forward last month when senior government and military officials and
other experts, organized by a joint Stanford-Harvard program called the
Preventive Defense Project, met behind closed doors in Washington for a
day-long workshop. 
The session, called "The Day After," was premised on the idea that
efforts focusing on preventing such a strike were no longer enough, and
that the prospect of a collapse of government order was so great if
there were an attack that the country needed to begin preparing an
emergency program. 
One of the participants, retired Vice Adm. Roger Rufe, is a senior
official at the Department of Homeland Security who is currently
designing the government's nuclear attack response plan. 
The organizers of the nonpartisan project, Stanford's William Perry, a
secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, and Harvard's Ashton
Carter, a senior Defense Department official during the Clinton years,
assumed the detonation of a bomb similar in size to the weapon that
destroyed Hiroshima in World War II. 
Such a weapon, with a force of around 10 to 15 kilotons, is small
compared with most Cold War-era warheads, but is roughly the yield of a
relatively simple bomb. That would be considerably more powerful and
lethal than a so-called dirty bomb, which is a conventional explosive
packed with some dangerous radioactive material that would be dispersed
by the explosion. 
The 41 participants -- including the directors of the country's two
nuclear weapons laboratories, Homeland Security officials, a number of
top military commanders and former government officials -- discussed how
all levels of government ought to respond to protect the country from a
second nuclear attack, to limit health problems from the radioactive
fallout and to restore civil order. Comments inside the session were
confidential, but a number of the participants described their views and
the ideas exchanged. 
A paper the organizers are writing, summarizing their recommendations,
urges local governments and individuals to build underground bomb
shelters, much as people did in the early days of the Cold War;
encourages authorities who survive to prevent evacuation of at least
some of the areas attacked for three days to avoid roadway paralysis and
damage from exposure to radioactive fallout; and proposes suspending
regulations on radiation exposure so that first responders would be able
to act, even if that caused higher cancer rates. 
"The public at large will expect that their government had thought
through this possibility and to have planned for it," Carter said in an
interview. "This kind of an event would be unprecedented. We have had
glimpses of something like this with Hiroshima, and glimpses with 9/11
and with Katrina. But those are only glimpses." 
Perhaps the most sobering issue discussed was the possibility of a
chaotic, long-term crisis triggered by fears that the attackers might
have more bombs. Such uncertainty could sow panic nationwide. 
"If one bomb goes off, there are likely to be more to follow," Carter
said. "This fact, that nuclear terrorism will appear as a syndrome
rather than a single episode, has major consequences." It would, he
added, require powerful government intervention to force people to do
something many may resist -- staying put. 
Fred Ikle, a former Defense Department official in the Reagan
administration who authored a book last year urging attack preparation,
"Annihilation from Within," said that the government should plan how it
could restrict civil liberties and enforce a sort of martial law in the
aftermath of a nuclear attack, but also have guidelines for how those
liberties could be restored later. 
That prospect underscored a central divide among participants at the
recent meeting, several said. 
Some participants argued that the federal government needs to educate
first responders and other officials as quickly as possible on how to
act even if transportation and communication systems break down, as
seems likely, and if the government is unable to issue orders. 
"There was a clear consensus that a nuclear bomb detonated in the
United States or a friendly country would be an earth-shaking event, and
we need to know how we will respond beforehand," said Ikle. "I wish we
had started earlier, because this kind of planning can make an important
difference." 
But others said the meeting made it clear that the results of any
attack would be so devastating and the turmoil so difficult to control,
if not impossible, that the lesson should have been that the U.S.
government needs to place a far greater emphasis on prevention. 
"Your cities would empty and people would completely lose confidence in
the ability of the government to protect them," said Steve Fetter, dean
of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. "You'd
have nothing that resembles our current social order. I'm not sure any
preparation can be sufficient to deal with that." 
Fetter added, "We have to hold current policymakers more responsible"
for taking all out measures to prevent a nuclear attack. 
Raymond Jeanloz, a nuclear weapons expert at UC Berkeley and a
government adviser on nuclear issues, said that California might be
better prepared than most states because of long-standing plans for
dealing with earthquakes and other natural disasters. Those plans, he
said, could be a useful model for first responders. 
He added, as others did, that the dislocation and panic caused by a
nuclear strike could make any responses unpredictable. 
"The most difficult thing is the fear that this kind of planning, even
talking about it, can cause," Jeanloz said. 
Michael May, a former director of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, defended the survival planning, saying that people should
get used to the idea that such a crisis, while dire, could be managed --
a key step in restoring calm. 
"You have to demystify the nuclear issue," said May, who now teaches at
Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. "By
talking about this, you take away the feeling of helplessness." 
E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold at sfchronicle.com.