The Nation's Pulse: The Nuke Next Door
Timmerman, Kenneth R .
THE NATION'S PULSE by Kenneth R. Timmerman The Nuke Next Door H ow safe are America's 103 nuclear power plants? Not very, according to David Orrik, a retired Navy captain and security specialist...
...But in the "real world," at least one terrorist attack against a U.S...
...Once past the guards, he rammed full speed into the turbine building, breaking down the door, and disappeared for four U.S...
...In its efforts to appease industry, the NRC in recent months has dramatically relaxed the standard of preparedness against terrorist attacks that industry must achieve...
...If real terrorists had gotten in, they could have placed explosives around the core, causing a catastrophic failure of the cooling system, a core meltdown, and a breach of the containment field, spewing a radioactive cloud across the northeast of the United States and southern Canada...
...People don't want to file because they are afraid of retaliation...
...According to Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass...
...In a separate exercise, also at Vermont Yankee, mock attackers managed to slip a fake KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN is a contributing editor for Reader's Digest and a frequent contributor to The American Spectator...
...Not one...
...Industry got NRC staff to cancel the program, without the commissioners knowing about it," says Paul Leventhal, who heads an industry watchdog group, the Nuclear Control Institute...
...Now they sayit's okay if terrorists penetrate to the reactor core," said David Orrik, "because the core is inside a containment vessel and the operators will be able to get it under control...
...Orrik's claim is especially credible...
...With the benefit of surprise, opposed only by a handful of guards and civilian plant operators, they could make Die Hard look like Home Alone...
...They are claiming that I improperly disclosed classified information at a meeting with contractors...
...In a letter to NRC Chairman Shirley Ann Jackson, Markey expressed his "concern that neither the nuclear industry nor the NRC senior staff appears to be taking seriously the threat from terrorist attacks and sabotage on commercial nuclear plants in the U.S...
...He also filed a formal "Differing Professional Opinion" (DPO) with the NRC in February...
...As in so many other security lapses of this administration, the NRC responded not by correcting the problem, but by attacking the messenger...
...W hen the NRC failed to take his recommendations seriously, Captain Orrik applied for whistle-blower status, and sent a detailed memo to Congress earlier this year...
...who has been prodding the NRC to reinstate the OSRE inspections, nuclear industry representatives told NRC staff at a Feb...
...The American Spectator • October 19 9 9 57...
...As Rep...
...The red teams are led by former U.S...
...Mike Stein, a lawyer for Orrik's labor union who sat in on his interview with the inspector general's office, called it "absolutely a trumped-up investigation...
...NRC spokesman Victor Dricks made no attempt to hide the NRC's motivation in canceling the OSRE inspections...
...Recalling the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, when a stuck valve came within a half hour of causing a core meltdown, he said that plant operators have no training and no experience at dealing with emergency situations...
...Before long, Orrik was informed that he was under investigation for alleged security breaches by the NRC's Office of the Inspector General...
...But as Leventhal argued at a May 5 public hearing of the NRC in Rockville, Maryland, even these measures are hopelessly inadequate to protect against the type of powerful truck bomb used by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, or by Islamic extremists against a U.S...
...I followed the NRC security procedures for such meetings to the letter...
...In reports submitted to the NRC and to Congress over the past year, Orrik warned that he had found "one or more serious weaknesses" that could have led to a nuclear accident in nearly half of the 55 nuclear power plants he had inspected...
...There's not a single facility in the U.S...
...The nuclear power industry argues that the plants are secure enough to deter attacks, and that any additional security would be costly and unnecessary...
...Like many other areas of national security, the problem is one of money, and the false sense of security that comes from there never having been a successful terrorist attack against a nuclear power plant...
...we didn't penetrate...
...Terrorists will go after soft targets, or attack on the streets of a city...
...But these remain isolated cases...
...Perhaps because of the dramatic security failures exposed by the OSRE inspections, the nuclear power industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission quietly joined forces in August 1998 to solve the problem — not by beefing up security, but by doing away with the inspections...
...The plant operators panicked," says the Nuclear Control Institute's Paul Leventhal, "and barricaded themselves into the control room, while the guards hid behind a coke machine...
...That assumption is absurd, according to the Nuclear Control Institute's Paul Leventhal...
...Imagine what would have happened if it had been a real attack, with grenades rolling on the ground and bullets exploding...
...It was only after Orrik and n other inspectors filed official complaints and the story leaked to the Los Angeles Times last November, that NRC chairman Shirley Ann Jackson intervened to reinstate the program...
...56 October 1999 • The American Spectator hours inside...
...Hardest of all to understand is the NRC position...
...But I can prove otherwise, since I taped the meeting they are referring to...
...If terrorists do attack, Leventhal warned, it's likely to be similar groups or individuals, heavily armed and with extensive military training...
...After filing my DPO, I'm sort of waiting for my own IC investigation...
...The costs...
...Until recently, the NRC required plant operators to design plant security systems and guard forces to prevent an intruder from reaching the reactor core, under the assumption that terrorists would be seeking to cause a Chernobyl-style core meltdown and widespread radiological pollution...
...There is good news...
...A total meltdown was averted only when a newly arrived shift supervisor figured out, two hours into the accident, what was going on...
...Markey wrote to NRC Chairman Shirley Jackson in February, "the administration's concern about related terrorist threats is growing: the FY 2000 budget request would boost counter-terrorism spending by 12% to $8.5 billion, including S1.4 billion to counter terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction...
...The NRC and the nuclear power industry work hand in glove," says watchdog Paul Leventhal...
...This is a basic change in the ground rules...
...He and a half dozen other NRC employees also filed DPOs, and they are all now worried about their jobs...
...Other utility operators complain that they have spent upwards of a million dollars just to prepare for the OSRE exercise, and millions more once the red cell has detected flaws in their security...
...They told me there was no threat to nuclear power plants," one "red cell" team leader told TAS, "and so any dollars spent on security were simply wasted...
...T]he human suffering and the property loss that would ensue would almost certainly bring about the downfall of the nuclear industry...
...Clearly, the costs referred to by Dricks are the costs industry has incurred to enhance plant security— unless, of course, he was attempting to pin the blame on Republicans in Congress for cutting the NRC budget...
...power plant has already occurred...
...It's not a healthy environment...
...It looks like it will be reorganized to death," Leventhal said...
...If one of the plants in the Chicago or New York City area were successfully hit, Leventhal told commissioners, it could send a radioactive plume heading across the metropolitan area that would create widespread panic...
...In the greater scheme of things, you have to weigh the relative risks, and the costs...
...In March 1998, for instance, red team attackers scaled the fence at the Vermont Yankee power plant near Burlington, Vermont, without being detected by plant security...
...They have become virtually indistinguishable these days...
...Air Force barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1996...
...handgun past a plant security check...
...Orrik and other NRC officials say many of the utility companies have benefited from the OSRE drills, and have voluntarily upgraded plant security...
...Entergy, the New Orleans power company that runs nuclear plants in Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana, has been one of the loudest critics of the OSRE program...
...All in all, the OSRE program costs the NRC three headquarters positions, and $90,000 a year for outside consultants (the red team leaders...
...The NRC is now planning to hand over responsibility for testing plant preparedness against terrorist attacks to the nuclear power industry, a proposal akin to putting Bonnie & Clyde in charge of security at the Federal Reserve...
...And that was just a stuck valve...
...The mock terrorist attacks, known as Operation Safeguards Response Evaluations by the NRC, pit "red team" intruders against plant security officers...
...After the Three Mile Island intrusion, the NRC promulgated what became known as the "truck bomb rule," which required plant operators to erect stronger perimeter walls and take other protective measures...
...There will be a spontaneous desire to evacuate, and it will not be pretty, to say the least...
...If you're a terrorist, you're going to find a lot of easier ways to wreak mayhem on the general population than by attacking a heavily guarded nuclear power plant," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the industry'smain lobbying organization, the Nuclear Energy Institute...
...OSRE was never designed to be a never-ending program, but to provide a baseline for improving security and assessing safeguards preparedness...
...nuclear power plants are ripe for terrorist hits...
...special forces officers and expert computer hackers, and have racked up some stunning—and scary —successes successes since the program was first instituted in 1991, knowledgeable sources told TAS...
...Luckily, it was an isolated effort by a recently released mental patient, who managed to drive his pickup truck onto the Three Mile Island complex outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania during a change in the security shift in 1994...
...Since then, however, it's been mired in bureaucratic snafus, rule-making, and reorganization...
...Commonwealth Edison, which runs six nuclear power stations in Illinois, including in the Chicago area, "has been doing the right thing," one inspector said...
...But at an NRC staff meeting on July 22, security planners were told they had a "myopic focus" on physical security...
...Others, in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and California have also backed Orrik's suggestions...
...A lot of us feel that filing a concern over safety is a kiss of death...
...We've gone to twenty or thirty facilities on these exercises," one member of the red cell told TAS, "and we have never failed to get in and simulate a Chernobyl type accident...
...Yet NRC staff last year quietly tried to eliminate the NRC's only counter-terrorism program for nuclear power plants...
...I wrote those procedures, so I ought to know what they entail," he says...
...10,1999 meeting they could not afford "all this junk"—barbed wire, reinforced concrete barriers, metal barricades, pillboxes, and security guards —and that visible security at the plants eroded public confidence in plant safety...
...He claims the inspector general has launched "a fishing expedition, looking for anything they could find on me...
...If industry has its way, the requirements for defense against terrorism will be downgraded in coming months, leaving skeptics such as Leventhal wondering whether it will take a major disaster for the NRC to get serious...
...Once inside, they were free to roam around restricted areas, eventually gaining access to the reactor core itself...
...Orrik scoffs at the accusation...
...The NRC still has an extensive program to "evaluate the record keeping and paperwork at the plants, to ensure their regulatory compliance, including with their security requirements...
...Not very, according to David Orrik, a retired Navy captain and security specialist in charge of conducting anti-terrorism exercises for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC...
...The decision to eliminate the program was made for budgetary reasons," he told TAS...
Vol. 32 • October 1999 • No. 10
