Nuclear Terror Attack On New York Would Kill More Than 250,000: Study

NUKEWARS

Ridge says new safety standards needed at US nuclear power plants
Washington (AFP) Feb 7, 2002 - Top homeland security advisor Tom Ridge said Thursday that the United States must reassess how to protect its nuclear power plants in the face of terrorist threats.

"The threat design of nuclear facilities has to be reconsidered," Ridge said in an appearance at the National Press Club here.

"Obviously, prior to the deployment of a commercial airliner as a weapon on September 11, the notion that an airliner conceivably would be used as a missile against a nuclear power plant was not part of the threat matrix that they looked at when they designed the facilities," he said.

"Right now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, working with the private sector, is looking at standards based on the new possible threat," said Ridge, appointed head of the newly-created Office of Homeland Security four months ago.

Last week a US military official said maps of US nuclear plants found in Afghanistan indicated that the al-Qaeda terrorist network was considering attacking them.

In the president's annual late January address to Congress, President George W. Bush said documents found in Afghanistan contained information on US nuclear facilities, water treatment plants, maps of US cities and information on making chemical weapons.

Paris (AFP) - Feb 8, 2002
A terror attack on New York using a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb would kill more than a quarter of a million people and leave hundreds of thousands sick, according to a computer estimate published in Saturday's British Medical Journal (BMJ).

The calculation, made by three physicians who are members of doctors' groups campaigning against nuclear weapons, used computer models created by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

The scenario is based on a bomb capable of yielding an equivalent TNT blast of 12.5 kilotonnes, smuggled into the port of New York aboard a shipping container and detonated at ground level.

"The blast and thermal effects of such an explosion would kill 52,000 people immediately, and direct radiation would cause 44,000 cases of radiation sickness, of which 10,000 would be fatal," the authors say.

"Radiation from fallout would kill another 200,000 people and cause several hundred thousand additional cases of radiation sickness."

The authorities' ability to aid survivors "would be very limited," they warn.

"About 1,000 hospital beds would be destroyed by the blast and 8,700 more would be in areas with radiation exposures high enough to cause radiation sickness. The remaining local medical facilities would quickly be overwhelmed, and even with advance preparation outside help would be delayed."

The authors are Ira Helfland, head of emergency medicine at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Northampton, Massachusetts; Lachlan Forrow, a professor at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston; and Jaya Tiwari, research director for Physicians for Social Responsibility, headquartered in Washington.

The three, who are members of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility, argue that the only effective to prevent nuclear terrorism is to abolish nuclear weapons.

The BMJ is the weekly organ of the British Medical Association (BMA).

NUKEWARS

Russian NGO Calls On Putin To Pardon Jailed Journalist

Moscow (AFP) Jan 31, 2002
Russian and American writers associations called Wednesday for the release of jailed Russian journalist Grigory Pasko in an appeal to the Russian and US presidents, the Interfax news agency reported.

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