[ RadSafe ] Fwd: NY Times Calls for N-Plant Protection

[Norm Cohen]

------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Jim Warren" <jim at ncwarn.org>
To: "Jim Warren" <jim at ncwarn.org>
Subject: NY Times Calls for N-Plant Protection
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:04:10 -0500

NY Times Joins Call to Protect Nuclear, Chemical Plants



This very powerful editorial should help the news divisions of the major  
media to quit shying away from this most prominent national security issue  
- and to create the public debate about how risks can and must be reduced.



(In NC, we're urging people to send the editorial to heads of Raleigh  
paper and statewide "public" radio)

Jim







The New York Times

Sunday, February 20, 2005



EDITORIAL



Our Unnecessary Insecurity





"Sept. 11 changed everything," the saying goes. It is striking, however,  
how much has not changed in the three and a half years since nearly 3,000  
people were killed on American soil. The nation's chemical plants are  
still a horrific accident waiting to happen. Nuclear material that could  
be made into a "dirty bomb," or even a nuclear device, and set off in an  
American city remains too accessible to terrorists. Critical tasks, from  
inspecting shipping containers to upgrading defenses against biological  
weapons, are being done poorly or not at all.



Costly as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were in lives, the death toll from a  
chemical, biological or nuclear attack could be far, far greater. A nation  
as open and complex as ours can never be totally safe from such dangers.  
But there is a great deal that can be done, without compromising our basic  
liberties, to eliminate obvious openings for terrorist attacks.



The biggest obstacles to making the nation safer have been lack of  
political will and failure to carry out the most effective policies. The  
Bush administration and Congress have been reluctant to provide the  
necessary money - even while they are furiously reducing revenue with tax  
cuts. The funds that are available are often misdirected. And Washington  
has caved to pressure from interest groups, like the chemical industry,  
that have fought increased security measures.



Most of all, the government has failed to lay out a broad strategy for  
making the nation more secure. Among the most troubling vulnerabilities  
that have yet to be seriously addressed:



Chemical Plants   After Sept. 11, the Environmental Protection Agency  
identified 123 chemical plants that could, in a worst-case attack,  
endanger one million or more people. There is an urgent need for greater  
action to protect them. But the chemical industry, a major Bush-Cheney  
campaign contributor, has bitterly fought needed safeguards. In her recent  
book "It's My Party Too," the former administrator of the E.P.A., Christie  
Whitman, said that chemical industry lobbyists thwarted the reasonable  
safety rules that she and the Department of Homeland Security tried to  
impose.



Nuclear Materials   A nuclear attack in an American city is the ultimate  
nightmare. The desire, on the part of the terrorists, is there: Osama bin  
Laden has declared acquisition of nuclear weapons to be a religious duty.  
Fortunately, there are considerable logistical and technological hurdles  
to terrorists' setting off a nuclear device. But it is far from  
impossible, and a so-called dirty bomb, which disperses radioactive  
material without a nuclear explosion, could be less of a challenge to  
make. The key to prevention is identifying and securing nuclear weapons  
and materials, especially in the former Soviet Union.



Nuclear Power Plants   There are more than 100 nuclear reactors producing  
energy in the United States. Many of them are in heavily populated areas.  
Some may be vulnerable to a suicide attack from the air, particularly if a  
plane managed to crack the wall around the pool of spent fuel, causing a  
fire that would send clouds of toxic gas into the atmosphere. Setting off  
a truck bomb could also have a devastating effect. While the plants are  
protected by armed guards, not all of those teams are of the highest  
quality. If the government can federalize airport luggage checkers, it  
should be able to provide the same consistency to security around nuclear  
power plants.



Port Security   One of the greatest threats to national security is the  
possibility that a weapon of mass destruction could be smuggled in on one  
of the millions of shipping containers that arrive from overseas every  
year. The government is doing more than it once did to inspect these  
containers, but there is still far too little money and manpower devoted  
to this crucial task.



Hazardous Waste Transport  Millions of tons of highly toxic chemicals and  
nuclear waste are shipped by railroad and truck, much of it through or  
near densely populated areas. The District of Columbia Council recently  
adopted a temporary ban on such shipments after a Naval Research  
Laboratory scientist warned that if a 90-ton tanker car carrying chlorine  
crashed during a Fourth of July celebration at the National Mall, it could  
kill 100,000 people in 30 minutes. But it makes no sense that one  
municipality is protecting itself against a worst-case situation while in  
other parts of the country, regulation of the transport of hazardous  
materials remains woefully inadequate.



Bioterrorism  The anthrax attacks of the fall of 2001 only began to  
suggest the devastating power of biological weapons. While officials are  
all too aware of the mortality rate that would follow an attack with  
weapons-grade anthrax, smallpox or plague, controls are still spotty.  
Lethal pathogens are too often stored in insecure laboratories.



Given these serious gaps, it is disturbing to see limited resources used  
as inefficiently as they have been. Fighting the last war, the Bush  
administration is devoting far too great a proportion of domestic security  
spending to preventing the hijacking of commercial aircraft. For a long  
time, it engaged in a draconian crackdown on academic visas, while the  
nation's borders - the likeliest entry points for future terrorists -  
remained as porous as ever. And with the stakes literally life or death,  
the pork-barrel politics that have controlled domestic security funds -  
giving Wyoming more per capita than New Jersey - are simply unconscionable.



While the administration does too little on one hand, it overreacts on the  
other, and seems oblivious to how its excesses are actually making America  
less safe. The abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the refusal to  
abide by either international law or basic constitutional principles do  
little to protect the nation, but make it harder for us to enlist  
much-needed allies, and provide powerful talking points for terrorist  
recruiting drives.



Many Americans have a false sense of security because there has not been a  
terrorist assault in the United States since the

World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were attacked. But that may  
have less to do with terrorists' intents than their timeline. Eight years  
went by between the 1993 attack that failed to bring down the World Trade  
Center and the one that finally did.



Looking back, we feel a natural frustration at all the warning signs that  
were ignored before Sept. 11. There is now a wide array of government  
reports, private studies and even best-selling books alerting us to  
remaining vulnerabilities. If the United States is hit by another attack  
at one of those points, we will have only ourselves to blame.






Jim Warren, Executive Director

NC WARN
North Carolina Waste Awareness & Reduction Network
Ph:  919-416-5077      Fax:  919-286-3985
PO Box 61051,  Durham, NC   27715-1051
Email:  Jim@ <mailto:Jim at ncwarn.orgWeb> ncwarn.org  
<mailto:ncwarn.org at pobox.com>     Web: www.ncwarn.org  
<http://www.ncwarn.org/>



-- 
Coalition for Peace and Justice
UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave, Linwood
NJ 08221; 609-601-8583; cell 609-742-0982
ncohen12 at comcast.net; http://www.unplugsalem.org
http://www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org

"A time comes when silence is betrayal.
Even when pressed by the demands of
inner truth, men do not easily assume
the task of opposing their government's
policy, especially in time of war.
Nor does the human spirit move without
  great difficulty against all the apathy
of conformist thought, within one's own
bosom and in the surrounding world."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

 
-------------- next part --------------
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 266.3.0 - Release Date: 2/21/05