NRC scraps commercial nuclear power terrorism program

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Tuesday November 3 6:44 AM EDT 

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal counter-terrorism program 
designed to identify security lapses at commercial nuclear power 
plants has been scrapped and budget cuts are partly to blame, the 
Los Angeles Times reported today.  

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission program is being dropped in a 
cost-cutting reorganization, the newspaper said.

The program was designed to prevent someone from causing the 
devastation seen at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine 
in 1986. An accidental meltdown of a reactor core led to at least 
125,000 deaths.   

The 1991 program was killed at the end of September. Three 
weeks earlier, the NRC issued an advisory that recommended
increased security at nuclear plants.

The program has identified serious security lapses at nearly half 
the nation's 104 nuclear power reactors, the Times said.

At one reactor, a team ``was able to reach and simulate 
sabotaging enough equipment to cause a core melt,'' said David 
Orrik, the NRC security specialist who directed the program.  

In March, NRC inspectors were able to scale fences at the 
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt. One
inspector smuggled a fake pistol past a plant security check.

To perform well in program drills, plants had to employ an average 
of 80 percent more personnel than their security plans called for, 
Orrik said. One of the exercises could cost a plant $140,000 to 
$800,000.  

Critics accused the NRC of caving in to pressure to cancel the 
program, which industry officials said was too expensive. Eleven 
NRC inspectors have filed written objections to the elimination of 
the program.  

``If the concern in this country were merely over accidental 
meltdowns, I wouldn't hesitate to build my house next door to a
plant,'' said Bruce Earnest, the NRC's security inspector for plants 
in California and Arizona.

``But if you start taking vital security away from these plants, I am 
not going to live 100 miles downwind. And doing away with the 
program is a major step in that direction.''  



Sandy Perle
sandyfl@earthlink.net
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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