[Howlin]

Vienna, 7 November 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The notion of nuclear terrorism is not new. In 1972, a Southern Airlines commercial jet flying in the southeastern United States was hijacked by three men who threatened to fly it into the Oak Ridge federal nuclear installation in Tennessee.

Luckily, the threat remained just that. But the idea sounds chillingly familiar to the events of 11 September, when hijackers used three fuel-laden jetliners to attack and destroy New York's twin towers and part of the Pentagon, near Washington.

One nuclear expert, in fact, suggests that the fourth plane hijacked on 11 September may have been bound for a nuclear facility.

[Howlin]

Former threat

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York brought back memories of the hijacking of a Southern Airways DC-9 in November 1972.  The three Americans who hijacked the plane after a stopover in Birmingham, Alabama, threatened to force the pilots to crash the plane into the Oak Ridge facilities.  (One of the hijackers had worked at Oak Ridge.)  They demanded $10 million “ransom.”  Promised $2 million, they forced the pilots to fly to Havana, where the plane landed safely. (Frank Munger, Knoxville News-Sentinel, 9/14/01; Duncan Mansfield, Associated Press, 9/19/01)

[cva66snipe]

I'm about 15 miles down wind from it. The blast if a crash occured would only be conventional unless they directly hit a reactor. But the fallout from storage facilities would be the real killer.