nuclear-news

A plan to crash plane into Oak Ridge nuclear reactor

Book: Hijackers had airplane in nosedive heading for U.S. nuclear reactor — “A very, very scary situation” -Energy Official http://enenews.com/book-hijackers-had-airplane-in-nosedive-heading-for-u-s-nuclear-reactor-a-very-very-scary-situation-energy-official
Title: The odd side of Oak Ridge history
Source: Knoxville News
Author: Frank Munger
Date: April 16, 2013

On the morning of Nov. 11, 1972, Oak Ridge stood still — or nearly so — while a hijacked Southern Airways jetliner circled above.

“It was a very, very scary situation,” Jim Alexander, a retired public affairs officer at the Department of Energy, recalled in a 2001 interview.

The hijackers threatened to crash the airplane into the Oak Ridge nuclear facilities if their demands, including $10 million in cash, were not met. […]

The threat was real, according to a 1977 book, “The Odyssey of Terror.”

The author, Ed Blair, wrote that the hijackers went berserk after placing a call to the White House and being shunned by John Ehrlichman, an aide to President Nixon, who apparently was unaware of the crisis. Blair reported that the hijackers held a grenade to the pilot’s head and ordered him to dive the plane toward the Oak Ridge reactor. The plane was actually in a nosedive when a report came over the radio that the money demands were being met […]

See also: Japan Gov’t Experts: Airplane crash affecting Fukushima spent fuel pool a key security issue for future

April 18, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, resources - print