| Nun who broke into US nuclear facility freed |
KNOXVILLE (Tennessee) A US magistrate judge on Friday ordered the release pending trial of an 82-year-old nun and another anti-nuclear activist charged with breaching security fences at one of the most sensitive US nuclear facilities, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where weapons-grade uranium is kept.
The security failure was an embarrassment for the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, the Energy Department branch that operates US nuclear weapons plants, and for the international security firm G4S, which owns WSI Oak Ridge, the contractor responsible for protecting the facility.
Officials said the facility was shut down on Wednesday at least until next week after peace activists Megan Rice, 82, Michael Walli, 63, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, cut through perimeter fences to reach the outer wall of a building where highly enriched uranium, a key nuclear bomb component, is stored.
The activists painted slogans and threw what they said was human blood on the wall of the facility, officials said.
Reuters
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