Atomic Policy Group Prods NRC on Safety

Federal regulators will consider a request by a California nuclear policy organization to bolster protections at the nation’s nuclear power plants against the type of terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Monday that it had accepted a petition from Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Santa Cruz group that contended that nuclear generating stations remained vulnerable to assaults by aircraft and groups of 20 or more terrorists operating on foot.

“There are still no air attack protections, though 9/11 happened three years ago, and nuclear plants only have to protect against a few attackers on the ground,” said Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear safety activist and the committee’s executive director.

The Committee to Bridge the Gap, founded by Hirsch more than 25 years ago, has been instrumental in getting the NRC to require precautions at nuclear plants against truck bombs and to remove weapons-grade uranium from research reactors.

In July, the committee asked the NRC to require plant operators to install barriers that can deflect crashing aircraft and increase the number of terrorists that plant security forces were required to be equipped to repel.

To prevent an airplane from hitting a nuclear reactor, the committee called for the construction of steel I-beams and cables around reactor domes, control rooms and storage areas for nuclear waste.

The group further recommended that plants be ordered to be able to defend against at least 19 attackers, the number of Al-Qaeda terrorists who hijacked four jetliners and flew three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Hirsch said that plants now are required to be capable of fending off a much smaller number of terrorists.

NRC officials and industry representatives contend that the risks of an air attack are very low. Even if a reactor were hit by a crashing plane, industry and government studies show that the release of significant amounts of radiation would be unlikely because of the robust construction of containment domes. Studies by the German government contradict those findings.

NRC officials said they would consider Hirsch’s petition in a formal rule-making process designed to develop or revise regulations for the nuclear power industry.

After a public comment period of 75 days, the matter will go before several review boards, then on to the commission for a decision. If adopted, the new rules could take 18 to 24 months to draft.

Eliot Brenner, an NRC spokesman, said the agency was reviewing Hirsch’s petition as well as a variety of other safety measures proposed by its staff. “In addition to stand-alone consideration, the thoughts in Hirsch’s petition will be considered as the staff develops their own suggestions,” Brenner said.

Since Sept. 11, NRC officials say they have issued about 30 security directives for the nation’s 103 commercial nuclear power plants, including California’s two: San Onofre in northern San Diego County and Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo.

Though the details remain confidential, NRC officials say the directives deal with the size, training and composition of security forces; security of power plants; barriers to protect against truck and car bombs; the size of security perimeters; and the numbers of terrorists that plants must be able to resist.

Industry representatives estimate that plant security forces have been increased 60% nationwide from 5,000 to 8,000 security guards. About $1 billion was spent last year alone for precautions against terror attacks, they said.

Though the costs have not been determined, industry representatives contend that Hirsch’s recommendations for physical barriers to defend against air attack would be far too expensive for utilities to implement, costing $300 million to $500 million per power plant. Hirsch disputes those figures.

“Based on everything that has been done so far, nuclear plants’ forces can defend against any reasonable threat,” said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade organization and lobbying arm for the nuclear power industry.