The NC WARN staff and board members share in the sadness caused by terrorist attacks on September 11th.  In the wake of these tragic events, we feel it necessary to continue conveying information about the issue of nuclear plant security.  Since 1998 and our struggle against CP&L's high-level waste expansion in 1998, Dr. Gordon Thompson and David Lochbaum have warned that the greatest chance of a reactor or waste-pool disaster is an act of malice or insanity. We are now more convinced than ever that CP&L’s intention to create the nation’s largest high-level waste site at the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant represents an increased risk that should be avoided.

MAY 4, 2001:  Since May, NC WARN has been publicizing the fact that the nuclear industry has sought to weaken security regulations at power plants, even though nearly half the nation's power plants have failed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s mock terrorist attacks against them.   After plant operators were given advance notice of the NRC force-on-force drills involving two or three attackers, the mock invaders not only gained entry, in most cases they were able to simulate destruction of enough equipment to cause a reactor meltdown.
[Click here to read the NRC documents]

Eugene Carroll, a retired rear admiral now with the Center for Defense Information, who served as director of U. S. military operations in Europe and the Middle East reacts, "Compare this gentlemanly security program with the fierce determination of a trained team of terrorists attacking a reactor without warning and taking it over long enough to disable the safety controls. At that point, a major Chernobyl-style disaster would be all but assured"(St. Paul Pioneer Press, 9/19).

In July, we pointed out that an associate of Osama bin Laden testified in federal court that power plants are primary targets (NY Times, 7/4).  But later that month, the nuclear industry successfully pressured the NRC into beginning a pilot program that allows plant operators to conduct their own security assessments.  The self-policing program "lowers standards, it lowers costs and it increases profitability of shareholders," says U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-MA (Los Angeles Times, 9/22).

NOTHING CAN SHIELD THE PLANTS FROM ATTACKS BY MISSILES OR AIRCRAFT:  On September 21st, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission admitted the containment shells that protect nuclear reactors were not designed to withstand the kind of direct crash by a commercial jetliner as was carried out by the terrorists (NRC Press Release 9/21).  The International Atomic Energy Agency said that most nuclear power plants were built during the 1960s and 1970s, and like the World Trade Center, were designed to withstand only accidental impacts from the smaller aircraft widely used at the time (AP 9/17).

"SPENT" FUEL POOLS:  The Spectator Magazine calls this "the problem no one's talking about" (9/27).  The structures in which waste cooling pools are usually located are far less fortified than reactor containment buildings.

“The loss of spent fuel pool water ... has the potential for contaminating the environment worse than would occur from a reactor core accident due to the significantly larger quantity of radioactive material available for release,” wrote Union of Concerned Scientists' David Lochbaum in his 1996 book Nuclear Waste Disposal Crisis.

Questions about how thick reactor and waste buildings are, and speculation about how direct an airliner would have to hit to cause a disaster, are moot.  A jumbo jet explosion at a nuclear plant could destroy enough vital equipment OUTSIDE those buildings to create a reactor meltdown and/or waste pool fire.

"CHARLES MANSON COULD GET ACCESS TO A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT,"– former high-ranking nuclear security officer Richard Kester, who was fired by CP&L for refusing to lie to the NRC about security failures.

US News and World Report (9/10) discovered the following incidents of recent years:

• At the Crystal River Plant in Florida (now owned by CP&L/Progress Energy), it was discovered that someone had intentionally disabled one of the plant's emergency diesel generators.

• In the early 1990s, Carl Drega was employed at three nuclear power plants in the Northeast despite an arrest record and a job reference that described him as "volatile." Two months after he left the third plant in 1997, he shot four people to death -- two state troopers, a judge, and a newspaper editor.

• A computer programmer who once worked in the control room at the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant goes to trial next year for murdering seven of his co-workers at a small technology company.  Co-workers said the man slept in a coffin and warned that he sometimes felt like killing people.

• In 1998, a worker at Florida’s Turkey Point plant had free access to critical areas of the plant for more than a month before officials learned of his 14 prior arrests.

• And at the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, officials took eight months to learn that a worker was an illegal immigrant with fake identification papers and an arrest record.

At CP&L's Shearon Harris, there have been repeated problems involving unauthorized workers, some inside the plant for over a month (NRC Documents).  This is troubling because reactor refueling requires the hiring of hundreds of temporary workers every 18 months who must be evaluated before beginning work.

NO NEED TO GET INSIDE:  Classified reports from Sandia National Laboratories show that a well-placed truck bomb would not even have to enter a site's property to destroy vital equipment, leading to a possible release of radiation. In addition, experts say, the water-intake systems at some plants are particularly vulnerable to sabotage by either cutting off the water supply, by clogging the intake valve, or introducing volatile chemicals into the reactor's cooling system (US News and World Report, 9/10).

A LIKELY TARGET:  Soon after the September 11th terrorist attack, according to the BBC, a television network in Moscow reported that Russian intelligence had warned the CIA that more attacks from Islamic terrorists could be expected and that U.S. nuclear plants were a likely target (New London Day 9/19).  In the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, the terrorists themselves warned The New York Times that nuclear attacks would follow.

AS FOR THE HIGH-LEVEL WASTE:  "Do we ship it all to a central site like the one proposed for Yucca Mountain – and create a spectacular series of terrorist targets for years, turning trains and trucks of waste into what critics deride as 'Mobile Chernobyl?'” asks The Nation, 9/16.

IF NOT NUCLEAR, THEN WHAT?  We’re stuck with nuclear power for now – and thousands of tons of essentially permanent waste.  We must begin to address the undue influence that the oil and nuclear industries wield, which pollutes the democratic process, prevents an honest debate over energy policy, and increases the tide of environmental degradation.
* Watch for upcoming NC WARN initiatives seeking to minimize all risks at CP&L's nuclear plants.

"Given that our national will and purpose are now being mobilized, does anyone doubt that … we could also establish wind power, solar power and hydrogen fuel cell power – and in so doing, completely wean ourselves from the oil of the Middle East?"  questions Matt Bivens of The Nation.   After all, as Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists notes, no one this week is calling his colleagues in the alternative energy sectors to ask about terrorist threats to windmills.

TAKE ACTION:   Make a brief call to Sen. John Edwards at 919-856-4245.  Urge him to demand stronger security measures at nuclear plants, and to call for an immediate halt to nuclear waste shipments to Shearon Harris.

To see the articles and more on nuclear insecurity, visit our website, www.NC WARN.org, and those of our allies:  Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org    Nuclear Information and Resource Service, www.nirs.org    Nuclear Control Institute, www.nci.org

September 28, 2001