July 31st, 2008
Assemblyman DeVore,
Don't pretend you aren't making ad hominem attacks. You are. I passed high school geometry with flying colors. My proofs were, in fact, almost always more concise than the other students, all of whom went on to college a few years later.
Containment domes are very flat and relatively thin at the top. A rake of four turbine shafts, with a fuselage full of explosives (perhaps including D.U. spears) and all that fuel in the wings would produce a level of devastation which is unparalleled in American history. It would out-do 9-11 in sheer terror, in real lives, and in total cost.
It is your duty to prepare America for such attacks, not to deny they can happen.
There's a video available of an old forestry service airplane which hits an updraft after coming over a mountaintop, and both wings break off. The fuselage continues in the general direction it was going. If this occurs during a 0-G dive the fuselage (which could be loaded with explosives) would continue in the same general direction, and the engines might break off from the wings as well, and continue with all their inertia, in the same general direction. In other words, a break-up a half mile or more before impact may not even be enough to prevent a direct hit, if the 747 was in a 0-G dive at the time anyway. The video of the forestry service breakup actually shows this quite well, and logic suggests it. And the terrorists know it, too. So the idea of barreling a 747 into a nuclear power plant is a good one (if you're a terrorist). It's not even a very difficult maneuver: You simply roll the plane over on its back and pull the controls towards your stomach a little. The exact aiming is admittedly the hard part, but I think the terrorists have shown that they can do it, and I have shown that I could do it, and anyone who spends enough time with Flight Simulator can show that they can do it, too.
The terrorists will be thinking of the service to humanity they believe they are doing (in their warped terrorist minds) as they approach the tight complex of two domes and a dozen buildings, many of which (they'll know which ones) can cause a meltdown or other release of deadly quantities of radioactivity. The terrorists will know exactly where the spent fuel pool is in relation to the two domes. Where would the engines and other large pieces of the 485-ton plane ricochet? Probably a lot of them would end up between the domes. Could that be anywhere near the control rooms or the emergency backup generators or the spent fuel pools? If they have an insider on the watch, the terrorists would even know when a dry cask is being loaded -- the transport truck is a particularly vulnerable target.
Of course, you don't think I'm being too technical, and I couldn't possibly be saying anything that might help the terrorists because according to you, there is nothing to worry about. In reality, the reason it isn't a crime to say what I'm saying is because the terrorists know everything I'm saying, and much, much more about our vulnerabilities. In addition, the things I'm saying are public knowledge, and it MUST be presumed that the terrorists can put two and two together, just like I can, even if you can't.
Even if it takes them a few years to prepare their 747 for the moment of striking. Or their Raytheon Hawker 800 corporate jet (which can carry a 10,000-lb bomb and still carry enough fuel to get to its target from several nearby airports), or their little fleet of Piper Cubs with gasoline-bomb explosives. Any of these could cause a meltdown. And when the attack happens, nobody will be responsible for giving the terrorists the idea of attacking a nuclear power plant -- they already have that idea. But, someone WILL be responsible for having provided the terrorists with a target.
That's where you come in. You are guilty of willfully and knowingly providing weapons for the enemy. And for what? California has replaced San Onofre's energy output about seven times in the past decade. We could have closed the plant along the way, and greatly reduced the threat of terrorism, and many other dangers.
Do a thought exercise and imagine you are the architect and designer of San Onofre, and I am the buyer. And imagine, just for fun, that I have to buy insurance for my project on the open market, there is no Price-Anderson Act to protect me, so my engineers are going to review everything very carefully.
In that case, your claims, made below, would have to stand up in court, as proof that not ONE of those four turbine shafts could go through the dome and as proof (a legally binding assurance, that engineering experts, aviation experts, etc. can validate) that a 747 becomes uncontrollable in ANY dive. In fact, the NRC disagrees with you, and so does the FAA. All planes can dive, Chuck. All planes can do barrel rolls which end up with a dive into the ground. While 747s aren't Stuka Dive Bombers, with air brakes and special strengtheners in the wings for just such a maneuver, they nevertheless are designed to go much faster than normal cruise speed and withstand much greater stresses. The difference between a 325-mile-per-hour crash (as one example that the nuclear industry might use to make a hollow claim about invulnerability) and a 650 mile-per-hour crash (a more realistic impact speed) is, let us just say, pretty substantial (or shall we say, the latter is four times worse?).
And if the terrorists decide to bring explosives on board their rented 747, they could carry quite a few, don't you think? Do you think terrorists cannot rent a Jumbo Jet, or even buy one outright and fly it legitimate-like all over the world for a few years?
I presume you are going to continue to abdicate your civic responsibilities and not respond to all the other points I made, and not bother to educate yourself about the things you help promote so shamelessly. You should go back to school. Take law, biology, engineering, debate, and political science -- if you get through all that, you can start on nuclear physics, which you've also already proven (with your "radiation is radiation" comparison of K-40 with H-3) you know nothing about.
Some of my readers are your constituents, others (including me) live within a few miles of San Onofre and deserve honest and responsible government, and all of my readers are seriously concerned about these issues.
You owe all these people an honest and serious response. You owe me an honest and serious response as a cancer victim and San Onofre downwinder. And you even owe your friends in the anti-DNA movement -- the one which produces tritium and poison our babies with it -- an honest and serious response, as one of its leaders.
Imagine that lives depend on making the right decisions, because they do. Thousands, if not millions of lives. So don't lie, don't make outlandish and irrational claims, and don't deny things that nobody in their right mind can deny. Don't pretend terrorists cannot cause meltdowns, because they can.
I stand by my previous comments and if you wish to libel me, then stand by yours.
Otherwise, take back your outrageous and irresponsible (and criminally negligent) comments, and respond seriously to the technical points in each of my recent newsletters that you've ignored. Or give up, embrace humanity, and help me shut San Onofre.
Do you plan to attend the NRC hearing at 6:30 tonight in San Clemente?
If so, I expect you to support me when I request that the participants be put under oath, and I expect you to do your civic duty, and not libel me in public as you have done in your letter. And don't make claims that are patently false, as you also have done in your letter.
Sincerely,
Ace
At 01:41 PM 7/31/2008 +0000, chuckdevore@aol.com wrote:
>You don't know much about geometry, do you? A containment dome is a dome, not a flat surface. This means it is impossible -- that's right, impossible -- for more than one turbine shaft to hit the dome at a 90 degree angle. That one shaft would penetrate about two-thirds of the way through. The remainder of the aircraft would glance off the curved sides. But, I'm sure you already knew that. As for the aircraft itself, step dive or no, a 747 will begin to break apart and be hard to control above a certain speed. But, I'm sure you know that too.
>Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
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Quotes collected by Ace Hoffman:
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"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details." -- Paul Brians (author; quote is from: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction)
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"When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." -- Sinclair Lewis (first American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 2.7.1885 - 1.10.1951)
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"There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist." -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, 1992)
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"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." -- Sun Tzu (Chinese general b.500 BC)
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"The most intolerable reactor of all may be one which comes successfully to the end of its planned life having produced mountains of radioactive waste for which there is no disposal safe from earthquake damage or sabotage." -- A. Stanley Thompson (a pioneer nuclear physicist who later realized the whole situation)
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"Any dose is an overdose." -- Dr. John W. Gofman (another pioneer nuclear physicist who saw the light (9.21.1918 - 8.15.2007))
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"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." -- Octavia Butler (science fiction writer, 7.22.1947 - 2.24.2006)
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"If you want real welfare reform, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to reduce poverty, you focus on a good education, good healthcare, and a good job.
If you want a stable middle class, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to have citizens who can participate in democracy, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
And if you want to end the violence, you could build a million new prisons and you could fill them up, but you never end this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and the skill and the intellect and the character of our children. you focus on a good education, good health care and a good job.
And other than that, I don't feel strongly about anything."
-- Paul Wellstone (US Senator, D-Minnesota, 7.21.1944 - 10.25.2002)
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"There are no warlike peoples - just warlike leaders." -- Ralph Bunche (8.7.1903 - 12.9.1971)
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"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson
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"Please send this to everyone you know!" -- Ace Hoffman (original collector of the above quotes, January, 2008)
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This email was sent by:
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA