Security of Nuclear Power Plants Under Review

["Jacobus, John (OD/ORS)" <jacobusj@ors.od.nih.gov>]

This article appeared in today's Washington Post.



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John Jacobus, MS

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Security of Nuclear Power Plants Under Review 

By Peter Behr

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, September 26, 2001; Page A08 



The security of the nation's 103 nuclear power plants is under an intense

review after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with hijacked jetliners, a

threat that the industry and its regulators were not prepared for, company

and government officials say.



Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard A. Meserve said yesterday

that a top-to-bottom evaluation of nuclear plant security was underway at

the agency. "There will have to be a much broader review involving the

entire government," he added.



"Nobody conceived of this kind of assault," said William M. Beecher,

spokesman for the NRC, which oversees the nuclear power industry.



The comments followed warnings from two watchdog groups about the potential

vulnerability of U.S. plants and the threat to people if attackers breached

reactor vessels and caused a meltdown that released large amounts of

radioactivity. About 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supply comes from

nuclear reactors, located in 31 states.



Although the most common nuclear power plants enclose reactors in thick

domes of reinforced concrete, those structures could be penetrated by a

direct hit from a commercial airliner, said Edwin Lyman, scientific director

of the District-based Nuclear Control Institute, one of the watchdog groups.

"Any nuclear power plant is conceivably vulnerable," he said yesterday.



Paul Leventhal, the institute's president, said the government should

station National Guard troops and U.S. antiaircraft units at nuclear plants

until the terrorist threat is controlled.



In government-run tests, concrete structures used in reactor domes have

withstood battering by heavy steel rods traveling at several hundred miles

an hour and, in one instance, a deliberate crash by a military jet fighter,

said Robert Henry, senior vice president of Fauske & Associates, a research

group in Burr Ridge, Ill.



But the impact of a fully loaded jetliner on containment domes had not been

evaluated before the Sept. 11 attacks, he said.



Nuclear plant operators said their security forces are on high alert.



At the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on California's central coast, for

example, state highway patrol officers help guard the entrance, the plant's

armed security force has been increased and more concrete vehicle barriers

have been added, said a spokesman for the plant's owner, Pacific Gas &

Electric Co. Public tours were canceled.



The U.S. Coast Guard has ordered vessels to stay at least a mile away from

the plant and is patroling the area, while plant guards monitor detection

equipment to spot intruders.



Leventhal and colleagues yesterday criticized the NRC's program for testing

nuclear plant security against potential armed attack on the ground.



The NRC stages simulated "force-on-force" raids by small assault teams

against nuclear plant security forces. In the past year, intruders succeeded

in penetrating reactor areas in six of 11 plants tested and could have

destroyed enough systems to cause a release of radioactivity, Lyman said.



Meserve said the tests reveal problems that then are remedied. "It would be

a mistake to suggest these are soft targets," he said.



Leventhal and colleagues called on the NRC to halt a pilot project in which

reactor operators would take on more responsibility for testing their own

security forces, subject to NRC review. The proposal, made by the nuclear

industry, would permit more testing than the NRC budget now permits, the

commission said.



Meserve said that program also is under review. "All of this is going to

have to be reevaluated," he said.



© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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