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Re: Article: Split on Nuclear Plants: Weak Spot or Fortress?
Administrative issues may be the biggest challenge to understanding. It
appears that "safety culture" is not uniformly built across all NPPs. In
some respects, the Davis-Besse difficulties were exacerbated by the HUMAN
element. That is still the hardest to make reliable in many ways. My
understanding is that at least some employees were NOT encouraged to
surface safety issues at Davis-Besse.
Cheers,
Richard
At 02:05 PM 10/24/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>I believe the fault lies in the fact that people do not know about things
>nuclear. For whatever reason, even intelligent people capable of
>understanding the science behind a nuclear power plant have an aversion to
>learning about it and being educated in the realities of the nuclear fuel.
>Of course, there are those that have political and/or financial agendas
>behind their thinking, but that probably accounts for only a minuscule
>percentage of the population. As professionals in the field of radiation
>protection, that is something we have always had to deal with... and it's
>a tough nut to crack. This aversion is rooted in our culture... back to
>the days before the Manhattan Project... even as far back as the turn of
>the 20th century. As some examples, listen to some of the old-time radio
>shows... especially science fiction like "X Minus One", or leaf through
>old comic books. These things are what laid the foundation for this
>aversion to things nuclear.
>
>As always, just my opinion.
>
>
> >>> "Jacobus, John (NIH/OD/ORS)" <jacobusj@ors.od.nih.gov> 10/24/02
> 12:19PM >>>
>It is difficult for me to find where the fault lies in this issue. The
>media for hyping the issue? The reactor owners for not being more open about
>reactor design and accident response? The NRC for not taking a more forceful
>in reassuring the public? No wonder the public is confused and lacks trust
>in what is said.
>
>I would not blame the ICRP, NCRP, etc., but I am sure someone will.
>
>-- John
>
>John Jacobus, MS
>Certified Health Physicist
>3050 Traymore Lane
>Bowie, MD 20715-2024
>
>E-mail: jenday1@email.msn.com (H)
>-------------------
>
>Split on Nuclear Plants: Weak Spot or Fortress?
>
>October 24, 2002
>By MATTHEW L. WALD
>
>WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - In the what's-next guessing game that
>began after the terrorist attacks last year, a divide has
>opened up among experts assessing the risk to the public
>from attacks on nuclear power plants.
>
>Many current and former government officials say the
>reactors are in Al Qaeda's cross hairs, but inside the
>industry, many executives counter that what drives the
>issue is politics and unreasoning fear.
>
>Current and former high-ranking officials at Andrews Air
>Force Base in Maryland for a recent exercise on how to cope
>with terrorism illustrated this divide. Over two days, they
>simulated a meeting of the National Security Council and
>were fed hypothetical situations in which intelligence,
>vague and conflicting at first but becoming more specific
>as the hours went by, indicated an attack somewhere in the
>eastern United States.
>
>They were also given an assessment that said that the
>targets vulnerable to the widest range of threats were not
>nuclear reactors, but places where chemicals were
>manufactured or stored.
>
>Almost immediately, the role-players shifted the discussion
>to how to protect the reactors.
>
>"The players defaulted in that direction," said Dave
>McIntyre, the deputy director of the Anser Institute for
>Homeland Security, a nonprofit group that sponsored the
>exercise with the Center for Strategic and International
>Studies.
>
>Mr. McIntyre said he thought the concern with reactors was
>an unnecessary detour, because their security had been
>improved far more than security for other potential
>targets. But the group did not see it that way.
>
>Reporters who were allowed to sit in on the exercise had to
>agree not to quote the participants, to allow them, the
>sponsors said, "to be as open and candid as possible" in
>the drill.
>
>The group included former Senator Sam Nunn, playing the
>president; James M. Loy, the head of the Transportation
>Security Administration, playing the role of secretary of
>homeland security; Charles Curtis, a former under secretary
>of energy, playing energy secretary; George Terwilliger,
>former acting attorney general, as attorney general; R.
>James Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director, as national
>security adviser; Wesley Clark, the former supreme allied
>commander in Europe, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
>Staff.
>
>Other participants played the jobs they used to have: James
>S. Gilmore III, former governor of Virginia; Shirley
>Jackson, former chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory
>Commission; James Lee Witt, former head of the Federal
>Emergency Management Agency, and Dee Dee Myers, a former
>White House spokeswoman.
>
>They explored creating a 50-mile zone around each nuclear
>plant where all flights would be banned, or bringing in
>antiaircraft batteries.
>
>On the other side, some people outside the simulation who
>are actually in charge of security at nuclear plants say
>they do not believe that they are threatened by terrorism,
>and are unenthusiastic about security improvements.
>
>Mark P. Findlay, the director of security at the Nuclear
>Management Company, which operates six Midwestern reactors,
>said in a telephone interview that there had been no
>credible threats against nuclear plants, and that he would
>prefer not to hire more guards now, for fear of having to
>lay them off later.
>
>"How do I deal with staffing levels when I have a
>government that's based on politics and not events and
>credible threats?" Mr. Findlay said.
>
>The airlines might once have said the same, and there have
>been attacks on nuclear plants abroad.
>
>Mr. Findlay is not alone. Last month, 19 current and former
>executives in the nuclear power plant field published a
>paper in Science magazine that asserted that a reactor
>could easily withstand a crash of the kind that destroyed
>the World Trade Center, a position disputed by others,
>including some on whose work the authors relied. The
>Science article argued that talk of vulnerability was
>simply wild-eyed conjecture by people who never liked
>nuclear power anyway.
>
>That category includes at least some local government
>officials who are now uneasy about the reactors in their
>midst. In the neighborhood of the Indian Point reactors, 40
>miles north of midtown Manhattan, local governments have
>passed resolutions against them. In Westchester County,
>where the two plants are, the County Board of Legislators
>voted on Sept. 9 to close them eventually.
>
>If the plants are so safe, why are so many people worried
>about them?
>
>"The news media has made the nuclear industry the poster
>child for the post-Sept. 11 world," said Steve Kerekes, a
>spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's
>trade association. "People who have been inundated for a
>year now gravitate toward that topic."
>
>"Some media grad student ought to do a study of air time
>and column inches dedicated to the subject," Mr. Kerekes
>said.
>
>Peter Stockton, a nuclear security expert who is a former
>special assistant to the secretary of energy, drew a
>different conclusion. Mr. Stockton, who now works on
>civilian power plant security questions with the Project on
>Government Oversight, a nonprofit group here, said the
>power plant managers were in denial as the managers of
>nuclear weapons plants were when he was at the Energy
>Department.
>
>"They say, `We've been at this for 50 years and we've never
>been attacked yet,' " he said. "They believe a credible
>threat is that a terrorist group has targeted that one
>plant, and they're coming."
>
>Paul M. Blanch, an engineer who found safety problems a
>decade ago at the nuclear utility where he worked, and whom
>the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later said was mistreated
>by his employer as a result, said the denial was "par for
>the course for the nuclear industry."
>
>"The industry has been defensive about every threat,
>whether it's security or accident," Mr. Blanch said.
>
>"If something happens, like happened with airlines, maybe
>they wouldn't be so defensive," he said, "but it hasn't
>happened yet. "
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/24/politics/24NUKE.html?ex=1036473428&ei=1&en
>=d3b6584220d6763f
>
>Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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