Word: nrc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Some nuclear-security officials privately call the design-basis threat a "funding basis threat," suggesting the threat has been scaled back to meet the bottom line of what the industry was willing to pay for security. "The NRC is basically saying that what they're doing is as much as you can expect private industry to pay for," says Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group...
Even if the current security standards are sufficient, there is some question as to whether they will be properly enforced. Last year the NRC approved the NEI's request to hire the Wackenhut Corp. to test security at the nation's plants. Such exercises--suspended after 9/11, pending improvements--resumed last fall. Each plant is to be tested once every three years, which means the British-owned Wackenhut is running fake attacks twice a month...
...nuclear power plants' security," says Congressman Markey. "It's like a take-home exam." No one in the industry has forgotten that just before a mock attack against a DOE facility in 2003, Wackenhut "attackers" tipped off Wackenhut guards about the particulars of the drill. Under the new rules, NRC referees are supposed to pay close attention to ensure that Wackenhut's fake attackers aren't holding back when they launch a mock strike against a plant Wackenhut workers are defending. "It's going to be pretty obvious if the adversary force is taking it easy," says Richard Michau, president...
...much death and disease as a reactor meltdown. The panel of the N.A.S., which is private but has a mandate to advise the Federal Government on scientific matters, said it couldn't determine whether the plants and their spent-fuel pools could be defended against attack because the NRC decided the panel "did not have a need to know this information." But the report cast aspersions on the NRC's assessments of terrorist threats to nuclear plants, saying the agency does not consider the most lethal possibilities...
...panel concluded by warning that additional study of security at the nation's nuclear plants "is needed urgently." It said twice that the review should be done by someone "independent of the NRC and the nuclear industry." That's a frightening postscript. Since 9/11, virtually everything having to do with nuclear-plant security has been in the hands of the NRC and the nuclear industry. Diaz takes offense at the N.A.S.'s pointed snub of his agency's expertise. "The recommendation was not well justified," he says. "I don't believe we need anybody to come...