WJR: 4th Plane's Intended Target was Three Mile Island Nuke Facility

WJR-AM | Sept. 24, 2001 | self

[The Energizer]

WJR-AM in Detroit just reported that the intended target of the 4th plane that went down in Pennsylvania was the THREE MILE ISLAND nuclear facility.

Makes me all the more grateful to the heroes on the plane who thwarted this plan.

[linn37]

hey I just live 10 miles from there as the crow flys,security was supposed to be tightened there right after the pentagon crash or so the local radio reported..........

[chimera]

Fire would have to be contained within a relatively small volume and sustained to get the kind of heat necessary to weaken either the rebar within the concrete of the containment shell that underlies the concrete missle shield. An open-air impact would likely result in considerable dispersion of the jet fuel, with subsequent heat transfer and somewhat reduced temperatures. What did in the WTC was the confinement of the fuel within the building which allowed relatively quick buildup and sustaining of the high temperatures.

This latter point is why I think Bin Laden must have purchased considerable expertise in construction engineering and materials science to pull off the kind of attack he did at the WTC.

[linn37]

supposedly are nuclear materials are protected by concrete under ground but I would hate to have to find out for sure

[First_Salute]

Hm.

[Anonymous2]

maybe they were going to launch their dirty laundry at all the targets listed?

[gfactor]

Statements like yours undermine the case for nuclear power

The case for nuclear power is pretty simple: "its one of the most expensive ways we have of boiling water".

[chimera]

I always thought Camp David was nonsense. My guess, the capitol or the WH but 3mile sounds reasonable. I remember the last emergency with that one, it was terrible.

Terrible in the sense of needless hysteria and panic incited by the media and their Luddite friends. Terrible because of the financial loss and bad publicity for a perfectly benign technology.

As far as deaths and injuries to the public or the on-site workforce, the 1979 accident was a non-event. We'd count ourselves lucky if all "emergencies" had these kinds of non-existent consequences.

[Anonymous2]

how can hatch-brain do anything to surprise anyone? anyone else notice he's been mia lately. what a buffoon.

[Chemist_Geek]

Tell me, how terrible was it? I remember it too. Nobody died. Nobody was injured. The area was exposed to low-level steam emissions. Statements like yours undermine the case for nuclear power. And they're just plain false.

The panic and hysteria amongst the population was terrible. More people were sickened by hypertension than anything else. Can you imagine what the soccer-mom hysteria would be nowadays? Stick a fork in the safest, cleanest source of electricity, nuclear power. Luddites have done it in.

[I am still Casey]

I too remember it well. I guess it depends on your definition of "terrible". This place was a virtual ghost town for two weeks due to evacuations, my family included -- doctor's orders (pregnancy).

We lived with uncertainty and fear during that time and wondered what we'd go home to. The aftermath? Plummeting real estate prices and seeing the cooling towers through a different prism.

This same rumor floated on 9/11 perhaps because people hear Pennsylvania and link it to Three Mile Island even though we have more than one nuclear power plant.

[TheDon]

We really don't need to give the eco-terrorists any ideas...

[Diddle E. Squat]

From what I can tell 8 planes at minimum were targeted. You have the 2 from Logan that hit WTC, the Dulles that hit Pentagon, Newark that went down in Somerset(one of the passengers said the terrorists said that they were going to destroy the Capitol). Now there was also a plane at Kennedy(?) that had mechanical troubles and didn't get off the ground, resulting in several Arabs on board getting angry and then leaving, now wanted by FBI. You had a boxcutter found on a Delta flight out of Boston that was grounded. Same on a Delta flight out of Atlanta to Brussels that was grounded. Finally, those two suspects with boxcutters pulled off the train in Ft. Worth were on a plane out of Newark bound for San Antonio that was grounded in St. Louis. So that adds up to 8 very likely hijack targets.

My guess is the Atlanta plane was likely headed either towards a DC area target(attack from a third southern approach) or perhaps CNN Center, as it has been stated that Atlanta was a target. San Antonio flight? Perhaps a Texas target for symbolism, since they hadn't acted before they were grounded in St. Louis. Boston Delta flight? Perhaps the third for the DC trifecta, Pentagon, Capitol, WH, but if Atlanta Delta was headed there, then perhaps TMI. TMI makes sense because the first strikes were designed primarily for symbolism and to instill panic, and a release with a wind from the west would affect nearly the entire Northeast Corridor. So TMI is a credible theory, but not for the Somerset flight.

[OldFriend]

Penn State's football field, perhaps.

[Capitalist Eric]

. Statements like yours undermine the case for nuclear power. And they're just plain false.

Agreed. Does TMI still have any operational plants? Or is it shut down? If it did have any cores still in operation, I could see a potential full scram, esp. due to impact vibration. However, XC would still be in effect, so it wouldn't mean much. Worst case, would be a core melt-down, identical to the previous incident. I.e., no big thing, containment is maintained.

If it hit the offline, cooled-down system, there'd be no effects at all... There is no decay heat to speak of, only residual decay of the fuel itself (negligible), so that would have been a total bust...

Much ado about nothing.

No news here, folks. Move along. Move along...

FReegards.

[rwfromkansas]

bump

[snorkeler]

Easy for you to say....but I live just down wind of TMI.

[There's millions of'em]

According to publicly available assesments of potential terrorist threats to nuclear facilities, it is not the reactor that is most vulnerable. It is the stored spent nuclear fuel. This stuff is secured such that a car or truck bomb would not likely get to it, but an aircraft would have a clear shot. In the case of a jumbo jet going into one of the known storage facilities, it is considered to be one of the worst possible scenarios. Worse by far than the WTC.