I posted this several years ago.
Flight 93 Was Targetting Nuclear Plants Message List
Reply | Delete Message #69255 of 70071
Flight 93 Was Targetting Nuclear Plants
“US security sources say that Three Mile Island, which is part-owned by British
Energy, was the subject of surveillance by some of the hijackers and their
associates in the months before the terrorist attacks. One security official
said: “Early on in the investigation we did receive a report from the FBI that
the plane may have been heading for a nuclear power station. This was based on
their analysis that Pittsburgh is near several power stations.”
After my morning posts I look at googlenews and read about a incident at a nuclear plant in England that Exelon owns, a compny the Thatcher ruled with an iron hand.
2:40 p.m. CST, January 30, 2012
Backup diesel generators are supplying power to Byron nuclear power plant after the plant lost power this morning.
Viktoria Mitlyng, spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Region III office Lisle, said two diesel generators are keeping the plant cool, with battery backup systems at the ready as well.
“It is not a huge concern,” Mitlyng said. “It is the lowest of (the four) power emergency level declarations.”
Mitlyng said one of two units at the plant — a 1,136 megawatt nuclear unit — was automatically shut down and is stable. Another unit — at 1,164 MW — is operating at full power.
Employees at the plant reported seeing smoke coming from a transformer on site after the outage. The plant’s fire brigade responded, Mitlyng, but didn’t find a fire.
To aid in cooling, steam is being released, she said, and the NRC staff are monitoring. Byron Fire Protection District Chief Galen Bennett said the steam contained “expected levels of tritium” — an isotope of hydrogen with a weak level of radioactivity. He said the public and plant workers were “never in any danger” and no one was hurt.
Steam releases may continue throughout the day
Byron nuclear plant is owned by Chicago-based Exelon Corp. and is in Byron, about two hours northwest of Chicago.
1999: AmerGen acquires Three Mile Island, Clinton, and Oyster Beach nuclear power plants in the United States; the company begins a diversification drive into non-nuclear-based power sources.
Company History:
British Energy Plc, in addition to being the United Kingdom’s largest power generator (by producing more than 20 percent of the country’s power supply through a network of eight nuclear power stations and several non-nuclear stations), is also a fast-growing energy producer in the North American market. Through AmerGen, its 50 percent joint venture with Exelon (formerly PECO and Unicom), the company owns three U.S. nuclear plants, including Three Mile Island’s Unit I (which, unlike sister Unit II, has never posed a direct public health risk). AmerGen’s other U.S. holdings include Clinton Power Station in Illinois and Oyster Creek in New Jersey. These stations add nearly 2,500 megawatts (MW) capacity to the company’s 9,600 MW in the United Kingdom. The company also holds a purchase agreement for the Vermont Yankee station, which is pending government approval. Meanwhile, British Energy also has expanded strongly into Canada, where it controls an 82 percent share of Bruce Power
This is why the FBI lied to me about the cover-up of Al-Qaeda targetting the
Lucas Heights during the 2000 Olympics – two months before 911. Bush took
actions to protect investors in nuclear energy, thus the motive for the
cover-up.
http://rougeknights.blogspot.com/search?q=lucas
Haliburton would have built many of the plants and provided security for them
through private contractors, such as Blackwater. This threat against nuclear
plants is why Cheney wanted to resort to torture. Does President Obama know the
truth?
If the FBI was looking at the threat by jet – before 911 – then they knew a jet
could be used as a weapon of mass destruction! These Privatizers were more
interested in protecting their Privileged Investors, who had inside information.
How many got wind of the nuclear catastrophe in the works, and pulled out their
money – to invest in Bundled Mortgage Loans!
The rich and powerful always save their ass, first, get in the lifeboats, and
row away!
Jon Presco
http://www.nirs.org/mononline/monitorcover1201.htm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act
Published on Sunday, October 21, 2001 in the Sunday Times of London
Nuclear Mystery:Crashed Plane’s Target May Have Been Reactor
by Nicholas Rufford, David Leppard and Paul Eddy
THE hijackers who forced a fourth passenger jet to crash during the September 11
attacks in America may have been intending to use it to bomb a nuclear power
station to cause a Chernobyl-type disaster.
The FBI is studying a report that the four terrorists who seized the plane may
have been attempting to steer it towards a cluster of nuclear power stations on
the east coast of America. The most likely target was Three Mile Island, site of
America’s most serious nuclear accident in 1979.
The 103 nuclear power reactors in the U.S. are vulnerable to acts of terrorism
and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other government agencies must impose
stricter safety measures to protect the facilities, two watchdog groups said
September 25, 2001. The Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute and the Los
Angeles-based Committee to Bridge the Gap urged the government to immediately
use National Guard troops to protect nuclear plants from attack. The Three Mile
Island nuclear power plant in Goldsboro, Pennsylvania is seen in this March 22,
1999 file photo. (Tim Shaffer/Reuters)
United Airlines flight 93 crashed into a field near the tiny town of
Shanksville, in Pennsylvania, 90 minutes after taking off from Newark, New
Jersey. All 44 passengers and crew on board died.
Until this weekend it had been assumed that the hijackers of the plane, a Boeing
757, were planning to fly it either to the presidential retreat at Camp David,
or to Washington and crash it into the White House or the Congress and Senate
buildings on Capitol Hill. But security officials have now revealed that within
a week of the attacks, the FBI sent a report to MI5 saying that a “credible
source” had said that the terrorists might have been planning to hit a nuclear
plant.
Had it breached the plant’s reactor vessel, such a strike could have caused an
incident on the scale of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, which spread
radioactive material over thousands of square miles in 1986.
US security sources say that Three Mile Island, which is part-owned by British
Energy, was the subject of surveillance by some of the hijackers and their
associates in the months before the terrorist attacks. One security official
said: “Early on in the investigation we did receive a report from the FBI that
the plane may have been heading for a nuclear power station. This was based on
their analysis that Pittsburgh is near several power stations.
“There is some plausibility to this and we’re not trying to dismiss it. But it
may well be that nobody will ever know where the plane was going.”
The “nuclear meltdown” assessment has not been independently confirmed but was
taken seriously enough by the FBI to pass to European governments, including
Britain and France.
The analysis is based on a study of flight 93’s flight path and the fact that
there are five nuclear power stations in the area. Experts say that the plane
does not appear to have been hijacked until it was passing over West Virginia,
some 200 miles beyond Washington. It then made a series of sharp turns before
going into a steep descent. Aviation experts say that at this point there were
three nuclear power stations between the plane and Washington and directly in
its line of flight: Three Mile Island, Peach Bottom and Hope Creek.
Investigators cannot understand why the plane would have descended so early,
unless its intended target was much nearer than Washington. The descent could
have been an error by one of the hijackers, but if so, they cannot understand
why the plane did not then climb again once control was regained.
America has since tightened security around nuclear stations and has taken steps
to withdraw maps on the internet showing the location of nuclear plants. A
French government minister said last week that fighters would shoot down
aircraft heading for its nuclear plants. A missile defense system had been
positioned at the Le Havre nuclear reprocessing plant.
In Britain, security around all nuclear sites has also been increased. David
Blunkett, the home secretary, has given new powers to the 500-strong police
force that guards the sites. Atomic Energy Authority police will be able to
patrol an extra 13 civil nuclear sites, including Sizewell, Hinkley Point and
Dungeness.
Engineering experts are divided over whether concrete containment shields around
nuclear power stations could withstand a direct hit from a large passenger
aircraft, especially one carrying 200,000lb of fuel, as was flight 93, enough to
reach its destination of San Francisco.
The containment buildings generally have an outer structure, which for much of
the dome is 3ft-thick concrete containing large amounts of reinforcing steel.
Inside is a steel “lining” 1in-4in thick.
There are usually two more concrete walls close to the reactor, each 1ft thick
and with reinforced steel bars. But these walls do not enclose the top of the
reactor completely. The reactor vessel itself is about 4in-6in thick and made of
high-carbon steel.
All reactors are designed to withstand impact by a light plane. Experts say it
is unclear whether a larger modern jet loaded with fuel, deliberately flown at
high speed, could break open the reactor vessel. The resultant fire could,
however, cause enough damage to allow radioactive material into the air.
The drama aboard flight 93 as a small group of passengers tried to seize control
of the plane from the hijackers during its final few minutes has become an
emblem of American heroism during the events of September 11.
Delayed 40 minutes in taking off from Newark’s congested airport, the plane was
in the early stages of its journey when its passengers started hearing that
other aircraft had been hijacked and at least one had flown into the twin towers
of the World Trade Center.
Todd Beamer, one of the passengers, called an emergency operator on an onboard
telephone after he and fellow passengers learnt of the first attack. He
explained that flight 93 had also been hijacked. He said there were three
hijackers – two with knives and one with what he thought was a bomb strapped to
his waist. In fact, there were four, and by this time the fourth was almost
certainly flying the plane.
Beamer, who was married with two young sons, told the operator: “We’re going to
do something. I know I’m not going to get out of this.” He explained that some
of passengers had decided to jump on the terrorist thought to have the bomb.
With the telephone left on, he could be heard saying: “Are you guys ready? Let’s
roll.” The operator heard screams and a few minutes later the line went dead.
· The FBI is looking into whether another United Airlines flight, scheduled to
leave Kennedy International Airport for San Francisco, was a target of hijackers
on September 11. When the plane was grounded because of the attacks, four Middle
Eastern-looking men refused to return to their seats and hurriedly left as soon
as its doors opened.
On December 11, 2001, three months after the attacks, President Bush speaks at
the new capitol of Pennsylvania—Philadelphia–in a service to mourn the 21,000
who died as a result of Flight 93. New estimates of the cost of the catastrophe
are above $200 Billion, not counting the costs of the permanent interdiction of
most of central Pennsylvania. Because the attack involved terrorism, and not an
accident, Bush declares the Price-Anderson Act, with its $8 Billion in nuclear
industry liability available, null and void. Instead, he says, Congress will
have to pass emergency legislation to begin to pay for damages and meet the
region’s needs.
At the December 11th memorial, Bush speaks movingly of those who sacrificed
their lives in their attempt to save the people of central Pennsylvania, and of
those who are willing to sacrifice their lives now in the mountains of
Afghanistan. And then, with executives of Exelon applauding from the stage, Bush
vows to reopen the nation’s nuclear reactors—all have been closed since
September 11–and to seek new means to encourage the construction of new
reactors to assure America’s energy independence.
Far fetched? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The London Sunday Times ran a
circumstantially convincing article on October 21, 2001 that Flight 93 may well
have been heading for Three Mile Island. The Washington Post reported on October
30 that an Osama bin Laden associate named Salahuddin Khaled, jailed in
Afghanistan, said that the September 11 hijackers should have flown into a U.S.
nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency has admitted that no
commercial reactors in the world are designed to withstand the impact of a large
jetliner at high speed with a load of fuel. The U.S. NRC reluctantly was forced
to follow suit. While Three Mile Island may have the most robust containment in
the country, being built on the flight path to Harrisburg Airport, there is no
certainty that it would handle a passenger jet crash even as well as it does in
this fictionalized version of events. Other reactors in the U.S., or anywhere
else, would fare worse, most much worse.
And there is certainly little reason to believe that the nuclear industry, nor
the Bush Administration, nor much of the U.S. Congress, have learned anything
from the events (and perhaps near-events) of September 11. Indeed, the industry
and its Congressional supporters have continued as if nothing ever happened, as
if, because of luck or timing or targeting or the acts of heroes, nuclear
reactors were never in danger and never will be.
Instead, the U.S. House of Representatives in November agreed, under a procedure
called Suspension of the Rules (normally reserved for non-controversial issues
such as naming of post offices), with only about 15 Members present, to
reauthorize the Price-Anderson nuclear insurance liability scheme that would pay
only about 10 cents on the dollar for foreseeable damages at most U.S. reactors.
The Exelon Corporation said it may purchase as many as 40 Pebble Bed Modular
Reactors (PBMRs) over the next decade, for use in the U.S. and for export. The
PBMR has the unique feature of being particularly vulnerable to terrorist
attack, since it has no containment structure.
Urenco, which apparently didn’t lose enough money to suit itself the last time
it tried to build a uranium enrichment plant in the U.S., a debacle known as
Louisiana Energy Services, in early December announced it will try again—with
partners Duke Energy and Exelon—to build a new uranium enrichment plant in the
U.S. An application to the NRC is expected as early as February 2002.
Even while halting for several months the nation’s largest (so far) shipment of
high-level nuclear waste, from West Valley, NY to Idaho, due to terrorist and
security concerns, the Department of Energy pressed ahead with plans to approve
the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. This is
despite the fact that the U.S. General Accounting Office recommended that DOE
hold off on its recommendation for several years, since the scientific work on
the site has not been nearly completed, and despite the DOE’s last-minute rule
change that acknowledges the Yucca Mountain site plays havoc with congressional
intent and cannot be considered a geologic disposal site. Instead, the DOE now
admits that burial in the mountain itself cannot possibly prevent radiation from
leaking into the environment; DOE says the canisters it will build to store the
waste will do the job instead. But under those parameters, the waste could be
stored in the basement bowling lanes of the White House…..Who needs Yucca
Mountain?
Make no mistake however. All of these developments, and more—which are reported
in this issue—are not signs of a nuclear resurgence or the development of a new,
mature, strong atomic power industry. Instead, they are signs of desperation, of
grabbing for any straw that pops out, of a sense of panic that they must act
now, or they never will be able to.
And, in fact, great changes do take a little time to sink in. The reality is
that we now know, and it is dawning on the American people, as well as the
people across the globe, that by building nuclear power plants and the fuel
cycle facilities that support them, we have created hundreds of nuclear targets
across our nation and across the globe. We have turned every two-bit terrorist
group into a nuclear power aimed straight at ourselves. We now can not only
concern ourselves with nuclear accidents, but with deliberate sabotage, terror
and destruction, and there is only one way to end that, and that is by closing
the reactors and their ancillary facilities as quickly and rationally as
possible, and by acting to protect the radioactive waste, which cannot be safely
moved in an era of terror, no matter that no one wants it where it is now. This
is the simple reality.
No terrorist or enemy-state would target a wind farm, or a solar plant, or
someone’s passive solar window blinds, nor an energy-efficient motor or
refrigeration system. Nuclear power plants are unique targets: in their
visibility, in their capacity to create terror, and in their ability to cause
genuine destruction. That lesson is self-evident, even if it takes a little
while to comprehend. But once it is genuinely understood, at least among the
public, if not the industry-paid policymakers, the nuclear era will be, finally,
in its inevitable waning moments. –Michael Mariotte, December 12, 2001
The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act (commonly called the
Price-Anderson Act) is a United States federal law, first passed in 1957 and
since renewed several times, which governs liability-related issues for all
non-military nuclear facilities constructed in the United States before 2026.
The main purpose of the Act is to partially indemnify the nuclear industry
against liability claims arising from nuclear incidents while still ensuring
compensation coverage for the general public. The Act establishes a no fault
insurance-type system in which the first $10 billion is industry-funded as
described in the Act (any claims above the $10 billion would be covered by the
federal government). At the time of the Act’s passing, it was considered
necessary as an incentive for the private production of nuclear power — this was
because investors were unwilling to accept the then-unquantified risks of
nuclear energy without some limitation on their liability.