Federal Regulators Reviewing Security at Nuclear Power Plants

Federal nuclear regulators said Friday that they will review anti-terrorist safeguards at the nation’s 103 commercial nuclear plants.

Even before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, security procedures at many nuclear power plants had been criticized as seriously inadequate by government inspectors.

On Friday, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said they were revisiting a range of security issues, not the least of which is the vulnerability of nuclear facilities to airplane crashes. The NRC acknowledged that nuclear plants were not built to withstand the impact of aircraft such as Boeing 757s and 767s, and that “detailed engineering analyses of a large airliner crash have not yet been performed,” according to a news release.

“Given the situation has changed in ways no one could have predicted--no one had envisioned airliners being used like kamikaze bombers--it does raise questions that had not been seriously looked at before,” William Beecher, the NRC’s director of public affairs, said Friday evening.

The NRC’s statements did little to reassure critics who have said for several years that federal regulators were not doing enough to protect plants against terrorist attacks from the ground.

David Orrik, director of the NRC’s Operational Safeguards Response Evaluation program, said Friday that from 1991 to 2000, anti-terrorist exercises showed “a potential vulnerability” at nearly 50% of the 68 plants tested. In simulated sabotage exercises, government employees or contractors attempt to breach plant security and get close to the reactor core. Severe damage to a core could allow the release of enough radiation to endanger the public.

A self-policing program by the nuclear power industry is scheduled to start this fall, in which plant operators themselves would test their facilities for anti-terrorist readiness, with NRC officials reviewing results.

The NRC in July approved the one-year pilot of the so-called Safeguards Performance Assessment Program. During the pilot period, the agency insists that it will continue to do its own security testing. It plans to conduct exercises at only six plants this year, however, instead of the usual eight.

An industry spokesman defended the pilot program, saying that testing would occur every three years, compared to every eight years for the current NRC-run operation. Federal regulators would still review results, said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy organization for nuclear plant owners and operators.

Since Sept. 11, environmental groups that monitor the safety of nuclear power plants have renewed criticism of NRC plans to give the industry more responsibility for testing plant security.

“It’s shocking that [NRC officials] continue to stick their heads in the sand at a time like this,” said Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear watchdog group based in Los Angeles.

“There’s not the slightest indication that they’re taking this situation seriously and implementing appropriate measures,” said Hirsch, who believes the commission should recommend that the nation’s governors call out the National Guard to protect plants and institute other urgent safeguards, such as fresh background checks on plant employees.

Meanwhile, NRC officials reversed earlier assurances that plants could withstand the crash of a jumbo jet.

Spokesmen for both the commission and two Western U.S. nuclear facilities had said Sept. 11 that domestic plants were built to withstand the impact of a Boeing 747. But officials said Friday that is simply untrue.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, the nuclear complex closest to Los Angeles, “is not designed for plane crashes,” said Ray Golden, spokesman for Southern California Edison, which operates the plant.

“We’re not on any of the flight paths, so that was not considered a credible threat,” Golden said Friday.

Since the attacks in New York and Washington, concern about nuclear plant safety has mounted among nuclear critics and some elected officials.

In New England, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) on Thursday wrote NRC Chairman Richard A. Meserve with concerns about anti-terrorist protections.

Dean called for reassessing security at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant on the Connecticut River near Brattleboro, which, he reported, was cited for security lapses in 1998 and again early this year. Even though he has been told these deficiencies have been corrected, Dean wrote, “I would like the confidence that an overall review of Vermont Yankee security and security culture has been undertaken.”

Markey’s letter is more wide-ranging, raising such questions as why the NRC only recommended Sept. 11 that plants nationwide go to their highest state of readiness, rather than issuing an outright order.

The congressman also questions the pending changes in the way the NRC tests the readiness of commercial plants to withstand terrorist attacks.

The self-policing program “lowers standards, it lowers costs and it increases profitability of shareholders,” Markey said.