On KUCI's Subversity show Friday September 21, 2001, we chat with Harvey Wasserman, a specialist on nuclear dangers, about that. He argues that nuclear plants such as San Onofre's should have been shut down immediately after the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., and remain closed.
The show airs live from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, and via kuci.org on the Web.
In an essay, Nuclear Terrorism, Nuclear Safety, Wasserman writes:
Despite saturation media coverage, both the Bush administration and mainstream commentators have been ominously silent about the most obvious terrorist target of all: our 103 licensed commercial nuclear plants.
The four jetliners hijacked September 11 flew perilously close to at least a dozen operating reactors, from Pilgrim, Millstone and Indian Point, between Boston and New York, to Surry, North Anna and Calvert Cliffs near Washington, to Peach Bottom, Limerick and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
Though the industry has claimed the containment domes on such plants might withstand a jet crash, no credible engineer would agree. In fact, it's inconceivable any of them could survive a direct hit followed by a long jet-fueled fire such as the ones that destroyed the World Trade Center.
And had the terrorists chosen to target one of those reactors instead of the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, we would be talking about tens of thousands of dead, hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of long-term cancers, and hundreds of billions of dollars in property damage.
In short, a holocaust from which this nation might never recover.
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We'll also chat with Wasserman about California's disastrous experience with energy deregulation. His latest work, The Last Energy War (Seven Stories Press), is a history of utility deregulation with a focus on the California crisis.
Wasserman was arrested at Diablo Canyon in 1984 and spent three nights in county jail. He has been working to shut the nuclear power industry since 1974. He's the senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service.
Wasserman has been called "perhaps the best known reporter on nuclear topics" (by the S.F. Review of Books). New Age Journal says "Harvey Wasserman has staked a valid claim to the long-unfulfilled position of historian for a new, emerging generation." He also wrote Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States. His "Sixth Column" appears bi-weekly in the Columbus (Ohio) Alive.
To chat with Wasserman, call (949) 824-5824 during the show. You can also send queries to subversity@kuci.org.
Resources
Cites to San Onofre in OC Weekly | San Onofre impact reports and emergency plans at UCI Library | Map of San Onofre facility and state beach.
dan
Daniel C. Tsang Host, Subversity, Fridays, 5-6 p.m. KUCI, 88.9 FM and Web-cast live via http://kuci.org Subversity: http://go.fast.to/sv; E-mail: subversity@kuci.org Daniel Tsang, KUCI, PO Box 4362, Irvine CA 92616 UCI Tel: (949) 824-4978; UCI Fax: (949) 824-2700 UCI Office: 380 Main Library Member, National Writers Union (http://www.nwu.org) AWARE: http://go.fast.to/aware WWW News Resource Page: http://go.fast.to/news Personal home page: http://go.fast.to/ar