America's Terrorist Nuclear Threat To Itself.

• Author: Wasserman, Harvey
• Position: Biodevastation

No sane nation hands to a wartime enemy atomic weapons set to go off within its own homeland, and then lights the fuse.

Yet as the bombs and missiles drop on Afghanistan, the certainty of terror retaliation inside America has turned 103 nuclear power plants into weapons of destruction, waiting to be used against us.

One or both planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11 could have easily obliterated the two atomic reactors now operating at Indian Point, about 40 miles up the Hudson.

The devastation would have been unfathomable. But those and a hundred other American reactors are still running. Security has been heightened. But all are vulnerable to another sophisticated terror attack aimed at perpetrating the unthinkable.

Indian Point Unit One was shut long ago by public outcry. But Units 2 & 3 have operated since the 1970s. Back then there was talk of requiring reactor containment domes to be strong enough to withstand a jetliner crash. Had one or both those jets hit one or both the operating reactors at Indian Point, the ensuing cloud of radiation would have dwarfed the ones at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

The intense radioactive heat within today's operating reactors is the hottest anywhere on the planet. So are the hellish levels of radioactivity.

Indian Point has operated so long its accumulated radioactive burden far exceeds that of Chernobyl, which ran only four years before it exploded.

Some believe the WTC jets could have collapsed or breached either of the Indian Point containment domes. But at very least the massive impact and intense jet fuel fire would destroy the human ability to control the plants' functions. Vital cooling systems, backup power generators and communications networks would crumble.

Indeed, Indian Point Unit One was shut because activists warned that its lack of an emergency core cooling system made it an unacceptable risk. The government ultimately agreed.

The assault would not require a large jet. The safety systems are extremely complex and virtually indefensible. One or more could be wiped out with a wide range of easily deployed small aircraft, ground-based weapons, truck bombs or even chemical/biological assaults aimed at the operating work force.

Dozens of US reactors have repeatedly failed even modest security tests over the years. Heightened wartime standards cannot guarantee protection of the vast, supremely sensitive controls required for reactor...