ML20094D627

Discusses 2.206 Petition Re Security/Terrorism Issue on Georgia Tech Nuclear Reactor

ML20094D627
Person / Time
Site:	Neely Research Reactor
Issue date:	10/27/1995
From:	Blockeyobrien AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED
To:	NRC OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS (EDO)
References
2.206, NUDOCS 9511060134
Download: ML20094D627 (4)

Text

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PAMELA BLOCKEY-O'BRIEN

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D23 Golden Valley *

.JL) f L Oi-2 Douglasville,G A 30134 The Executive Director, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, QW- USA Washington, D.C. 20555 I N) ps Oct. 27th, 1995 With regard to my 2.206 Petition under 10 cfr. on the Georgia Tech Nuclear Reactor Docket 50-160 (in all combinations such as 50-160 Ren) hhd the security / terrorism issue I raised in my original, very first letter to the NRC under this petition :

When I met with the NRC in Atlanta, and the FBI representative, and on

-subsequent occaissions, when I raised the terrorism issue and my concern that not even putting the entire United States Armed Forces around that dump of a reactor could prevent a damned thing, I was assured that everyone could handle everything, that the security was not a problem.

Over and over I asked that security be increased, that roads be blocked off and on and on. Now, as you have been informed, a television crew not only wandered around inside, but climbed the fence in broad daylight and got on the building. This was done absent the Olympics.

The weapons grade uranium is still there, the hundreds of thousandsa of curies of cobalt-6o Tech doesn't want to remove are still there, The damned cesium-137 is still stashed under the floor in the adjacent building (Mnd, according to new reports may have contaminated the living daylights out of the place) and lo, and behold the public was not safe and the security stank. With all its millions of dollars, Tech couldn't even have made the fence electric, couldn't even have put guards all around. No, I suppose Tech is too busy rubbing its grubby hands together over all the lovely money and publicity it'll get with the Olympics, sinking dorms and security be damand.

If that TV crew had been terrorists, ,

hotevenTechsmightyPublic Relations machine would have been able to stop the resulting world-wide negative publicity, not to mention probable loss of life and a nuclear disaster, for which this city is totally unprepared.

In Techs arrogance, Mot only can it not bear to admit that a few women, myself included, have raised so much fuss that Tech has had to say it will remove the uranium and the cesium, it is seemingly determined to jeopardize an entire city by keepin'; the Cobalt-60 onsite during the Olympics (Mnd absent the Olympics, and bring uranium back in afterwards,)

and all the federal and state government will do about the Cobdit-60, all anyone will do is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. You all can't protect it,

.Meyer could, never will be able to At the risk. of repdating myself for the millionth time, wake up, smell the radioactively contaminated sewage sludge, and get everything out of there NOW. Seal the roads off, stick M few tanks around the thing and a platoon of soldiers, DO SOME-THING GUYS.

The enclosed articles show that a quarter of a ton of explosives has been stolen in the Atlanta area and no one seems to be able to find it. Furt hermore that the FBI and the CIA are working together to deal with " substantial" threats to security at next summers Atlanta Olympics.

What about NOW ? I feel like I am standing on a sinking raft in the middle of the Pacific in a typhoon yelling " help!". I am disgusted at the way NRC Washington has handled my 2.206, I am disgxusted at Tech, I qua outraged dt the entire situation - but hey, p m all obviously don't care.

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The students are at risk. The campus police are at' risk. The fire-fighters are at risk. The poor people who live nearby are at risk. The whole city is at risk AT PRESENT, and IF Ga. Tech / DOE /NRC ever get the U-235 abc. etc. out of there before the Olympics, everyone is still going to be at risk from the cobalt-60. After the Olympicsit will be the same story, as the LEU (higher in plutonium-and God alone knows if it will fit, or blow up when the whole mess is cranked up again) and the cobalt-60 vill still be there. But no one cares it seems.

Hasn't Tech spent enough money on lawyers, and enough TAXPAYERS money using the State Attorney Generals office lawyers to keep the taxpayers i EXPOSED to the dangers ? I guess not. Just think how happy all the parents of all the students at Tech would be knowing that the greed of Tech outweighed their childrens safety. Does Tech (and the NRC office in downtown Atlanta) believe that somehow they are immune to the effects of some type of catastrophe happenning concerning the reactor complex and the cobalt-60 ? Hasn't the NRC read all of this years lousy inspection results ? The place is a disgrace. Where is everyones common sense.

We know the track record at that dump, we know how old it is and we know how dangerous it is. We also know it has no place in the middle of any city, town or village. So, the NRC should do what I asked under this 2.206, and in the meanwhile, HOW ABOUT SOME SECURITY ?

The cobalt-60 MUST go Georgia Tech CAN survive without nuclear facilities on site. Tech is so cosy with the DOE it can go and use their facilities at one of DOEs national sacrifice areas, like Oak Ridge, or Savannah River Nuclear Site.

Has Tech got enough insurance that in the case of catastrophe it could pay the claims of the hundreds of thousands of relatives of the dead ? You can bet not even LLoyds of London would insure that dump, and the Price-An(

Anderson Act (that eternal bad joke) sure wouldn't cover it all. Home- 1 owners and business insurance doesn't cover nuclear catastrophe or things resulting from civil unrest etc. Read your policies. ANyway, even if it were covered, money is meaningless to dead people and no money in J the world can compensate for the results of radioactive contamination.  !

However, I get the distinct impression that no one at Tech or the NRC seems to realize or understand the effects of radioactive contamination '

because, if they did 1)dhe entire reactor, contents, cobalt-60 etc. would j have been removed already 2) all nuclear power plants would be dismantled,,

3) dnd all nuclear weapons also. Either you all really don't grasp the  !

enormity of what you are dealing with, or greed and evil have the upper j hand. I like to believe it is the former, but I am beggining to really I wonder if it isn't the latter.NRC may argue that it has no control over th5 cobalt-60 as Tech owns it, but that is just an easy out. If NRC really I cared about the public and the environment, NRC would ask the President to issue and Executive Order to get it out of there.And if those who are in power at Tech cared they would have done the same.

If there is a nuclear catastrophe during (or absent) the Olympics, what i excuse do you all intend to give the Almighty for your criminal negligencej '

let alone surving members of the public ?

Yet again, grant my 2.206.

Pamela Blockey-O'Brien.

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The Manta Journal / The Atlanta Constitution

~^^~~nemon ****** Friday. October 20.1995 C3 o w=musana, j

.'C4*Tue'sday, October 17,1995 ***&* @j The stolen explosive is7

~ , e made from the same chemi-h cals as the bomb that leveled i eO the federalbuildingin Oklaho-ma City six months ago.

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T I%%6I "We just couldn't take any chances . .. until we nutd prove definitely it wasn t con-k MfTROP0UTAN PUB g *C nected to terrorism and there was no danger to anyone par, ticipatm, g in the march, Goetz said.

Explosives probe ' ongoing' caller threatened McManus said agents with 1 A Georgia skinhead organizer whose name has surfaced in the mvestigation of a theft of ex-MiHion Man March the,,US , Bureau

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plosives from a Norcross-area blasting company By R. Robin Mcdonald terrorism task force have is well-known among hate-group monitors. and Scott Marshall estioned him in connection But Samuel Miles Dowling,23, told The Atlan- STAFF WRITERS e& loh M He ta Journal Constitution in an interview last year that he did not espouse violence, and police say he '

. I,he day after a quarter ton c6nstant surveillance- l recently has begun wearing long sleeves to cover of. explosives was reported ' I his Nazi-themed tattoos. "I used to work there [ Con- l stolen from a Norcross blast- trolled Blasting]," he said. "It Dowling was linked in reports published this ing company, an anonymous seemed only logical."

weekend to the theft of ammonium nitrate, fuel oil I and blasting caps from Controlled Blasting Inc. calier stolen sive,s warned that "the m Georgia areexplo- A Federal investigator last week. , d Federalinvestigators in A tlanta would not dis- meant for the Million Mane l approached him after the March. Oklahoma City bombing, sus- i cuss Dowling on Monday. "I'm not going to com- That threat, fielded by the 1 pecting that he might be the ment at all," said Bobby Browning, spokesman NAACP Legal Defense Fun mysterious John Doe No. 2, for the Atlanta office of the Bureau ofAlcohol, To- att Washington, drew the FBI,d s then thought to be in league bacco and Firearms. "The investigation's ongo. Counter-Terrorism Task with bombing siispect Timo-ing."

Forgein Atlanta into the ongo- thy.McVey- s In 1991, Dowling formed an organization ingitheft investigation, said called Socialist Youth of Georgia, a neo-Nazi safd Ed Goetz, task force com- Acetz confirmed that group, and is regarded by people who monitor ex. g.6. mander. agents questioned McManus.

Wednesday morning but have tremist groups to be a major organizer for skin- ,

ay Eleven 50-pound bags of head activities. Dowling attracted 130 armed men ANFO, a volatile mixture of g found nothing to link him or

-to a rally in Dawson County last August, law en. any of his friends to the threat forcement officials said.

ammonium nitrate and fuel against the march or any sus-oil, and more than a thousand Dowling and four other skinheads were ar- bl pected terrorist activity.

{ rested in 1992 during the 11-day siege at Randy Co$ ting caps vanished from ntrolled Blasting Inc. dur.

" McManus,24, a bur 1y U.S.

Weaver's cabin in northern Idaho. They tried to ing the first weekend of Oc. Navy veteran whose arms and btrak through police roadblocks and deliver tober, are covered ith e Investigators, fears esca- gec weapons to Weaver, a white separatist who holed i up in his cabin after his son, his wife and a U. lated when they learned a for. trolied Blasting for about I marshal were shot and killed. The skinheads. mer S. company employee, Jef. three months.

f dismissed. weapons were legal, and the charges frey Jameswere McManus, and his ATF spokesman Bobby.

former housemate, Samnel I

- Scott Marshall and R. Robin McDonafd Miles Dowling,were members Browning said agents are {

of a loosely knit white suprem- questioning all current and 1 acist youth corps known as former ccmpany employees. -

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" skinheads." 'fl haven't done anything,

i6 % Gotu FBut the FBI now says that McManus said Thursday.

s the Lawrenceville skinhead "They weren't bad today.They and his compatriot, both of didn't try to give me a hard g"

gg0F YMGON Go,@bg whom have been affiliated time or anything. If they've got j I

g/ with a group known as the i certain leads that they've got Confederate Hammerskins, to follow, they're going to fol-I are not behind the phoned-in low them. That's their job. ,

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r w hu dreds of t ou "The day that I'll worry is 1 sands 'of African-American . . . when instead of coming to '

men to Washington on Mon Aask questions, they come with

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their guns drawn.'

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- Thursday, October 26l1995 B7.i

~/ Q%8 fhe Atlanta Journal /The Atlanta Constitution NADON FBI, CIA working on Games security j g g [f g g y g g The FBI and CIA are working together to deal with " substantial" ~ ~~

threats to security at next summer's Atlanta Olympics, top adminis- eral repe *ers after the hearing.

tration officials told senators Wednesday. The FBI is taking the lead i

and is getting help from the CIA in assessing the potential threats from foreign terrorists, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Goretick said at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"I am comfortable that we are on target for the substantial securi-ty challenges that we face there," she said in response to a question.

Goretick is the No. 2 ofHelal at the Justice Department, which has au-thority,over the FBI. Jeffrey Smith, the CIA's general counsel, of-feredJo briefcommittee members on "what we think the threats are" in a Fature closed session. - . ,

Th6 CIA has experience in infiltrating terrorist groups outside the Utiited States, and was helping the F Bl "in order to protect American citizens and American lives at the Atlanta Olympics," Smith told sev-

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