In 2012 an 82-year-old activist nun broke into the largest nuclear complex in the United States to bring attention to the ease with which its security could be breached.
“Sister Megan Rice and two other activists from Plowshares (an anti-nuclear organization), Michael Walli, 63, and Gregory Boertje-Obed, 57, were dropped off in the middle of the night outside the Y-12 Oak Ridge nuclear facility near Knoxville, Tenn…. Armed with spray paint, bolt cutters and a few other supplies, they fi rst hung large banners on the facility’s chain link fence, then cut 14-inch inverted L-shape openings in the three fences that ‘protect’ the facility,” the New York Daily News reported.
The three then proceeded to walk to the building housing highly enriched weapons grade uranium, easily avoiding any electronic motion sensors and video cameras.
Once inside the building, “I wrapped some pillars in crime tape,” said Rice. “We splashed a vial of human blood on the wall.”
“They spray-painted quotes from the Bible such as, ‘swords into plowshares,’ and banged on the building with hammers. Then they waited to be arrested…They waited some more.” the Daily News reported.
“We saw a car with a guard slowly driving up. He stopped, and radioed to the police that protesters had gotten in,” said Rice.
As the result of her break-in, Rice was sentenced to 35 months for interfering with national security and was ordered to pay $52,000 for estimated damage to government property.
The facility did not repair the damages for five months until members of Plowshares showed them exactly where the damage was done.
At her sentencing, the nun told the judge, “Please have no leniency with me. To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest gift you could give me.”
Sister Megan Rice was born in 1930 in New York City to a father who was an obstetrician and a mother with a Ph.D. from Columbia University. At 18 she joined the order of Sisters of the Holy Child of Jesus while studying at Harvard and earning degrees in biology from Villanova and Boston College.
She knew she was going to prison for breaking into the nuclear facility as a protest, but believe it’s up to people without children, who have nothing to lose, to take the risks others can’t afford, Rice told the Daily News.
“The Y-12 Nuclear Facility, which they breached in less than seven minutes, and which can theoretically be breached by real terrorists, houses 100,000 tons of highly enriched uranium,” the Daily News reported.
“This uranium is bomb-grade and so explosive that one grapefruit-size chunk, if dropped onto another chunk of the same size from a height of 6 feet, would cause an explosion at least half the size of Hiroshima,” said Robert Gleason, author of The Nuclear Terrorist.
“The question – how can we overcome the secrecy and blatant distortion of the truth of the horrific risks to planet Earth’s survival as we know it, as long as we fail to transform the nuclear weapons and energy industries into possible, life-enhancing alternatives, and begin with dismantlement now? We are all equally responsible to stop known crimes, according to our unique gifts and abilities,” Sister Megan said.
Sister Megan Rice, now 85, served two years in a federal prison. Last May, an appellate court declared the government had overreached in charging them with sabotage and ordered the three activists released, The New York Times reported.
