Nuclear Plant Security Plan Said Discarded

Operators of the San Onofre nuclear power plant have concluded after an in-house investigation that a copy of the facility’s security plan missing since October was probably thrown away by mistake.

One of 60 copies, the plan was usually kept at the plant’s security office in a file that is locked at night. Officials with Southern California Edison, the plant’s operator, found no evidence of tampering.

David Barron, an Edison spokesman, said Thursday that the plan describes possible threats against the plant and outlines how security workers and law enforcement agents would defend against them.

Although the two-inch-thick booklet is considered a “safeguarded” document by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is not so detailed that release of the information to the wrong hands would compromise security, Barron said.

Typically, the plan is checked by workers before a design or policy change to ensure that such changes do not violate security, he said.

Greg Cook, an NRC spokesman, agreed that the missing document posed a significant problem.

“This was not a guidebook to the plant’s security program,” Cook said. “Although the document had quite a bit of information, it does not contain all the details of site security. Other documents would be needed to put together a complete picture of site security.”

Cook said the NRC plans to review Southern California Edison’s findings during its next security inspection at San Onofre. He said the plant operators had already notified the NRC that proper corrective actions had been taken to alter security operations outlined in the book.