Three activists, including 84-year-old nun Sister Megan Rice, were handed prison sentences on Tuesday for breaking into a secure nuclear weapons complex on June 28 2012. The Y-12 National Security Complex, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is a vital processing and storage area for bomb-grade uranium in the United States.
Rice received a 35-month sentence, while her companions, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli, each received 62 months in prison, likely a nod to their existing criminal records. The trio, all followers of the Catholic faith, expressed the belief that they were carrying out God's will to draw attention to the dangers and consequences of nuclear weapon use.
Rice, Boertje-Obed and Walli sliced through three separate fences around the perimeter of the facility - dubbed the 'Fort Knox of uranium' - breaching the barriers to reach the $548 million nuclear bunker. Once inside, they scrawled slogans on the walls, including 'The fruit of justice is peace,' and used baby bottles to distribute human blood through the complex. "The reason for the baby bottles was to represent that the blood of children is spilled by these weapons," said Boertje-Obed of the act. The three also hung crime scene tape and entered the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility - designed to be the most secure area of the complex - and chipped off part of the internal structure.
Despite triggering alarms on entry, the protesters remained in the facility for around two hours before being apprehended by guards. Gregory H. Friedman, the Inspector General of the Department of Energy, penned a report condemning the level of security at the complex, noting failures in contractor governance and the implementation of federal security standards enabled. While defense attorneys have argued that Rice, Boertje-Obed and Walli weren't in close enough proximity to build a makeshift bomb, the invasion nonetheless emphasized "troubling displays of ineptitude... and weaknesses in contract and resource management."
The protesters were tried under the U.S. criminal code statute pertaining to international and domestic terrorism - a conviction that could fetch up to thirty years imprisonment. Despite urging Judge Amul Thapar to hand her a longer sentence, Rice's comparative lack of criminal history saw her wishes fall on deaf ears as she received a decidedly shorter jail term. "Please have no leniency with me," she said during the trial, as reported by the Associated Press. "To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest gift you could give me."
Upon release, each of the three protesters will be subject to three years of supervised probation. Together, they are also required to pay nearly $53,000 in restitution for damaged federal property.
