Nuclear Plants Could Be Attacked by Terrorists

Re “We Need the National Guard to Protect Our Nuclear Plants,” Commentary, Oct. 11: Driving north and south on I-5, I and thousands of others pass right by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, on the northern edge of Camp Pendelton. Suddenly, it dawned on me how incredibly easy it would be for two or three suicidal 18-wheelers heading south on the 5 to pull over to the side of the freeway (as many of them do), exactly opposite the two domes of the nuclear reactors, only 50 or 60 yards from them, and within 10 to 20 seconds detonate themselves!

Even if they didn’t rupture the domes, even if radiation leakage was kept to a minimum, the psychological impact would be huge. Southern California would empty itself. Businesses couldn’t function due to the exodus of workers who, rightly or wrongly, would fear for their lives.

We must have a military force on the San Onofre premises. There should be F-16s circling overhead and some force stationed on both sides of the freeway as well as on the ocean side to immediately intercept any vehicle that stops within a mile of the facility. Are all of our futures here in Southern California really left to a small, overworked, privately run security force? Call out the Marines!

Richard Armstrong

Carlsbad

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Why is the National Guard not protecting San Onofre?

Gerald A. Caterina

Huntington Beach

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We have 103 nuclear weapons distributed across our nation, waiting to be detonated by our enemies. Why would we need a missile defense system to protect us against nuclear weapons when the weapons are already here, conveniently built and placed by us? The federal and state governments have done nothing to protect us. As Daniel Hirsch points out, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has failed in its responsibility to protect us. Instead, it has bent over backward to protect industry profits.

Just as those who designed and built the New York twin towers didn’t think of our airliners as bombs that could annihilate the buildings, so the great geniuses who conceived of, built and managed our nuclear plants didn’t imagine having to protect these plants from a Chernobyl-type meltdown. If the containment dome or the controls of the plants were destroyed, there would be thousands of square miles of cancer-inducing radioactive contamination lasting eons around the site of each plant disaster. Could America survive this? The twin towers incident sounds the death knell for nuclear power.

Richard Saxon

Encino