From NCI- News Hours Transcript 11/2/01; Focus- Nuclear Safeguards

[Norman Cohen <ncohen12@HOME.COM>]

FYI

Norm





> The NewsHour with November 2, 2001, Friday Transcript

>

>      FOCUS - NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS

>

>      JIM LEHRER: Now, more on the safety of the nation's nuclear

> facilities. Betty Ann Bowser has been looking into that.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: Just one hour after the terrorists struck on

> September 11, the federal agency responsible for safety at nuclear

> power plants puts its emergency operations center on its highest state

> of alert. Since then,  emergency crews, seen here in a drill, have been

> working 24 hours a day, and are in constant

> touch with the FBI and the military. The Nuclear Regulatory

> Commission, or NRC, also put the nation's 103 nuclear reactors on their

> highest state of alert.

>

>      RAY GOLDEN, San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant: We have

> essentially locked down the facility. The gates are manned with armed

> security officers. The only people getting in and out are employees with

> positive photo identification.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: Now, the Coast Guard is patrolling waters

> around nuclear power plants. The National Guard is on duty in at least

> eight states. State police are also pitching in. And earlier this week, 126

> general aviation airports close to nuclear power plants were effectively

> shut down when the FAA ordered small aircraft not to fly near or

> over nuclear power plants. But even with all this heightened

> security, long-time critics of the NRC are concerned. Congressman Ed

> Markey thinks a terrorist   attack on a nuclear power plant has been a

> very real possibility for more than ten years.

>

>      REP. ED MARKEY, (D) Massachusetts: If the terrorists were

> successful in hijacking another plane, then flying one into a nuclear

> power plant would be a relatively easy task for them to achieve.

> Depending upon which direction the wind was blowing, everyone

> that was in the path of the radioactive plume would be exposed to a

> danger that could run anywhere from death to serious long-term illness

> for every single individual.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: Markey says it would be even more

> devastating than the world's worst nuclear energy accident in 1986 at

> Chernobyl. 15 years later, hundreds of miles of land around what was

> once the nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union are still

> uninhabitable. Markey wants the NRC to make the owners of the nuclear

> plants that supply 20% of the nation's electricity to completely revamp

> security procedures and hire more guards. NRC Chairman Dr. Richard

> Meserve says the agency has done everything reasonable it can to

> protect American nuclear plants. But he's not sure that any of them

> could withstand a September 11 type of attack involving a big airplane

> with a full load of fuel.

>      RICHARD MESERVE, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

> This was a wake-up call, September 11, for all of us about the kind of

> world we live in and the threats that exist.

>      But let me say I think the real crucial question is, if they were =

> able to do it, what would the consequences be? That is something that

> has not been evaluated previously. It is an evaluation that we are

> undertaking. I can say that nuclear power plants are built with very

> heavy and robust structures. They have thick walls of reinforced

> concrete. They have redundant safety equipment. So I think that,

> although we have not done the evaluations, there are features of nuclear

> power plants that are very favorable in terms of their capacity to be able

> to respond to such an event without

> there being undue public hazard.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is it not correct, sir, that the NRC has said

> since September 11 that our plants were not designed to withstand the

> impact of an attack like that?

>

>      RICHARD MESERVE: That's correct.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: And you stand by that statement?

>

>      RICHARD MESERVE: Of course, of course. They were not... They

> were not designed. This was viewed as a very improbable event to

> occur, and so it wasn't one of the design criteria. In that, of course,

> we're similar to most other infrastructure in the United States: The white

> House, the Pentagon, the capitol, chemical plants,

> refineries also were not designed to withstand an aircraft attack of the

> type that we saw on September 11.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: But Ralph Beedle, senior vice President of

> the nuclear industry's trade association, does think the plants could

> survive a terrorist attack from the sky.

>

>      RALP BEEDLE, Nuclear Energy Institute: The public can be pretty =

> confident that these plants are designed to contain the radioactive

> material. I am confident that containment would withstand the crash of a

> large commercial aircraft and protect the core to the point that you

> would not have a radioactive release.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: But it's not just the nuclear reactor that

> might be compromised in the event of a terrorist attack. Another major

> area of concern: These pools containing used-up fuel rods. Once the

> rods are no longer able to generate electricity, they remain

> radioactive for 10,000 years. So at all of the nuclear power plants,

> they have been stored in pools of water that keep them from heating up

> and spreading radiation contamination. David Lochbaum is a nuclear

> engineer with the union of concerned scientists, a watchdog agency.

>

>      DAVID LOCHBAUM: If you were able to drain the water out of the

> pool that Houses the reactor fuel, the fuel would overheat and either

> melt down or catch on fire, releasing its radioactivity to the atmosphere

> and the winds would carry it to whoever is downwind.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: And the rods are also stored at 13 power

> plants that have been decommissioned or closed down, where critics

> say security by the NRC is lax.

>

>      DAVID LOCHBAUM: I think the biggest vulnerability still is not the

> operating plants but the plants that have been permanently shut down.

> At the plants that have been permanently shut down, security is

> basically been turned down to bare bones minimum. If a terrorist

> were to get access to this material and cause it to be dispersed into

> the atmosphere with an explosive of some sort, the government had

> studies done last year that shows it would be the... in terms of damage

> to the public, it would be the equivalent of a ten kiloton bomb going off,

> atomic bomb.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: Chairman Meserve says security at the

> nation's decommissioned plants has been increased dramatically.

>

>      RICHARD MESERVE, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

> We certainly do worry about spent fuel pools, just as we worry about

> reactors and other kinds of facilities. And the concern you have for a

> spent fuel pool is if somehow all of that water were to disappear, and

> then the fuel could heat up and then you might have an event that you'd

> certainly be worried about. But they then present a rather difficult

> target for an airplane, that you'd have to imagine that somehow the

> airplane is going to come into a... Collide into a pool in a fashion that

> can rupture the wall of four or five feet of reinforced concrete-- a

> difficult

> attack.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: What can you tell us about increased

> security at those facilities?

>

>      RICHARD MESERVE: Well, for understandable reasons, I can't go

> into the details, but there are enhanced guard capabilities and controls

> on vehicles and things of that nature.

>

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: But equally disturbing, say NRC critics, is

> the industry's record with force-on-force drills. Those are the NRC's

> unannounced simulated terrorist attacks like this one recorded at a

> nuclear power plant a few years ago. Again,

> Congressman Ed Markey:

>

>      REP. ED MARKEY: Over 40% of all the tests, which the Nuclear =

> Regulatory Commission applies to the nuclear industry are flunked by

> the nuclear industry in terms of security against terrorist attack. The

> American people want... should want, and I think do want, the tests to

> be toughened, for the standards to be increased so that

> there's a reduction in the likelihood that any terrorist attack, much less

> 40% of them, could be successful.

>

>      RICHARD MESERVE, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

> Where we found problems we required... Immediately required that

> corrections be in place. I mean, I take some satisfaction from the fact

> that we found failures. We were giving hard tests and we were hard

> graders and we were requiring corrections. We were doing this

> before September 11. I think everyone in government is now recognizing

> that terrorists may have greater capabilities than we had expected

> before September 11, and we'll have to reexamine this issue, and the

> Commission is certainly going to do that.

>      BETTY ANN BOWSER: The NRC is doing a multimillion-dollar study

> of the impact of an airplane attack, and they are revising something

> called the design basis threat, which specifies what kind of a terrorist

> attack every nuclear plant operator is required to defend itself against.

> Meanwhile, Congressman Markey today asked the administration to

> put the National Guard on duty at all active and decommissioned  plants

> and arm the with antiaircraft weapons.

>

> Tom Clements

> Nuclear Control Institute

> 1000 Connecticut Ave., NW  Suite 410

> Washington, DC  20036

>

> tel. 1-202-822-8444

> fax  1-202-452-0892

> clements@nci.org

> http://www.nci.org



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