[ RadSafe ] Nuclear power plants; radiological bombs not on top of list of attacks

[bobcherry at cox.net]

The mind boggles.

At a minimum, the military likely would classify such a report as FOUO. More likely, it would be CONFIDENTIAL. The fact that a website in Hawaii accidentally released it does not mean it should be turned into a press release, in my mind. Instead, take it off the Hawaii website.

Bob C
> 
> From: John Jacobus <crispy_bird at yahoo.com>
> Date: 2005/03/16 Wed PM 04:35:14 EST
> To: radsafe <radsafe at radlab.nl>,  know_nukes at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Nuclear power plants;
> 	radiological bombs not on top of list of attacks
> 
> >From today's New York Times
> 
> March 16, 2005
> U.S. Report Lists Possibilities for Terrorist Attacks
> and Likely Toll
> By ERIC LIPTON 
>  
> ASHINGTON, March 15 - The Department of Homeland
> Security, trying to focus antiterrorism spending
> better nationwide, has identified a dozen possible
> strikes it views as most plausible or devastating,
> including detonation of a nuclear device in a major
> city, release of sarin nerve agent in office buildings
> and a truck bombing of a sports arena. 
> 
> The document, known simply as the National Planning
> Scenarios, reads more like a doomsday plan, offering
> estimates of the probable deaths and economic damage
> caused by each type of attack. 
> 
> They include blowing up a chlorine tank, killing
> 17,500 people and injuring more than 100,000;
> spreading pneumonic plague in the bathrooms of an
> airport, sports arena and train station, killing 2,500
> and sickening 8,000 worldwide; and infecting cattle
> with foot-and-mouth disease at several sites, costing
> hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Specific
> locations are not named because the events could
> unfold in many major metropolitan or rural areas, the
> document says. 
> 
> The agency's objective is not to scare the public,
> officials said, and they have no credible intelligence
> that such attacks are planned. The department did not
> intend to release the document publicly, but a draft
> of it was inadvertently posted on a Hawaii state
> government Web site.
> 
> By identifying possible attacks and specifying what
> government agencies should do to prevent, respond to
> and recover from them, Homeland Security is trying for
> the first time to define what "prepared" means,
> officials said.
> 
> That will help decide how billions of federal dollars
> are distributed in the future. Cities like New York
> that have targets with economic and symbolic value, or
> places with hazardous facilities like chemical plants
> could get a bigger share of agency money than before,
> while less vulnerable communities could receive less. 
> 
> "We live in a world of finite resources, whether they
> be personnel or funding," said Matt A. Mayer, acting
> executive director of the Office of State and Local
> Government Coordination and Preparedness at the
> Homeland Security Department, which is in charge of
> the effort. 
> 
> President Bush requested the list of priorities 15
> months ago to address a widespread criticism of
> Homeland Security from members of Congress and
> antiterrorism experts that it was wasting money by
> spreading it out instead of focusing on areas or
> targets at greatest risk. Critics also have faulted
> the agency for not having a detailed plan on how to
> eliminate or reduce vulnerabilities.
> 
> Michael Chertoff, the new secretary of homeland
> security, has made it clear that this risk-based
> planning will be a central theme of his tenure, saying
> that the nation must do a better job of identifying
> the greatest threats and then move aggressively to
> deal with them.
> 
> "There's risk everywhere; risk is a part of life," Mr.
> Chertoff said in testimony before the Senate last
> week. "I think one thing I've tried to be clear in
> saying is we will not eliminate every risk."
> 
> The goal of the document's planners was not to
> identify every type of possible terrorist attack. It
> does not include an airplane hijacking, for example,
> because "there are well developed and tested response
> plans" for such an incident. Planners included the
> threats they considered the most plausible or
> devastating, and that represented a range of the
> calamities that communities might need to prepare for,
> said Marc Short, a department spokesman. "Each
> scenario generally reflects suspected terrorist
> capabilities and known tradecraft," the document says.
> 
> 
> To ensure that emergency planning is adequate for most
> possible hazards, three catastrophic natural events
> are included: an influenza pandemic, a magnitude 7.2
> earthquake in a major city and a slow-moving Category
> 5 hurricane hitting a major East Coast city.
> 
> The strike possibilities were used to create a
> comprehensive list of the capabilities and actions
> necessary to prevent attacks or handle incidents once
> they happen, like searching for the injured, treating
> the surge of victims at hospitals, distributing mass
> quantities of medicine and collecting the dead. 
> 
> Once the White House approves the plan, which could
> happen within the next month, state and local
> governments will be asked to identify gaps in
> fulfilling the demands placed upon them by the
> possible strikes, officials said.
> 
> No terrorist groups are identified in the documents.
> Instead, those responsible for the various
> hypothetical attacks are called Universal Adversary.
> 
> The most devastating of the possible attacks - as
> measured by loss of life and economic impact - would
> be a nuclear bomb, the explosion of a liquid chlorine
> tank and an aerosol anthrax attack.
> 
> The anthrax attack involves terrorists filling a truck
> with an aerosolized version of anthrax and driving
> through five cities over two weeks spraying it into
> the air. Public health officials, the report predicts,
> would probably not know of the initial attack until a
> day or two after it started. By the time it was over,
> an estimated 350,000 people would be exposed, and
> about 13,200 would die, the report predicts.
> 
> The emphasis on casualty predictions is a critical
> part of the process, because Homeland Security
> officials want to establish what kinds of demands
> these incidents would place upon the public health and
> emergency response system. 
> 
> "The public will want to know very quickly if it is
> safe to remain in the affected city and surrounding
> regions," the anthrax attack summary says. "Many
> persons will flee regardless of the public health
> guidance that is provided."
> 
> Even in some cases where the expected casualties are
> relatively small, the document lays out extraordinary
> economic consequences, as with a radiological
> dispersal device, known as a "dirty bomb." The
> planning document predicts 540 initial deaths, but
> within 20 minutes, a radioactive plume would spread
> across 36 blocks, contaminating businesses, schools,
> shopping areas and homes, as well as transit systems
> and a sewage treatment plant.
> 
> The authors of the reports have tried to make each
> possible attack as realistic as possible, providing
> details on how terrorists would obtain deadly
> chemicals, for example, and what equipment they would
> be likely to use to distribute it. But the document
> makes clear that "the Federal Bureau of Investigation
> is unaware of any credible intelligence that indicates
> that such an attack is being planned."
> 
> Even so, local and state governments nationwide will
> soon be required to collaboratively plan their
> responses to these possible catastrophes. Starting
> perhaps as early as 2006, most communities would be
> expected to share specially trained personnel to
> handle certain hazardous materials, for example,
> instead of each city or town having its own unit.
> 
> To prioritize spending nationwide, communities or
> regions will be ranked by population, population
> density and an inventory of critical infrastructure in
> the region.
> 
> The communities in the first tier, the largest
> jurisdictions with the highest-value targets, will be
> expected to prepare more comprehensively than other
> communities, so they would be eligible for more
> federal money.
> 
> "We can't spend equal amounts of money everywhere,"
> said Mr. Mayer, of the Homeland Security Department.
> 
> To some, the extraordinarily detailed planning
> documents in this effort - like a list of more than
> 1,500 distinct tasks that might need to be performed
> in these calamities - are an example of a Washington
> bureaucracy gone wild. 
> 
> "The goal has to be to get things down to a manageable
> checklist," said Gary C. Scott, chief of the Campbell
> County Fire Department in Gillette, Wyo., who has
> served on one of the many advisory committees helping
> create the reports. "This is not a document you can
> decipher when you are on a scene. It scared the living
> daylights out of people." But federal officials and
> some domestic security experts say they are convinced
> that this is a threshold event in the national process
> of responding to the 2001 attacks.
> 
> "Our country is at risk of spending ourselves to death
> without knowing the end site of what it takes to be
> prepared," said David Heyman, director of the homeland
> security program at the Center for Strategic and
> International Studies, a Washington-based research
> organization. "We have a great sense of vulnerability,
> but no sense of what it takes to be prepared. These
> scenarios provide us with an opportunity to address
> that."
> 
> Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
> 
> +++++++++++++++++++
> "A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy
> enough people to make it worth the effort." Herm Albright
> 
> -- John
> John Jacobus, MS
> Certified Health Physicist
> e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com
> 
> 
> 		
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