Word: nrc
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...NRC's website, the agency ducks the issue--after raising it in a Q&A--of whether today's nuclear plants are "capable of withstanding a 9/11-scale attack." Before 9/11, there was "reasonable assurance" that the guard force could defeat the then small DBT, the agency says. In the wake of 9/11, it continues, "the defensive capability of the industry has been significantly enhanced." But the website never answers the question it just posed. Could a 9/11-size terrorist force take down a U.S. nuclear power plant...
...could perish eventually from cancers spawned by the attack. Millions of people in the greater New York area would have to be permanently relocated, and economic losses could top $2 trillion. Lyman's study echoes the findings of one done by the Sandia National Laboratories for the NRC in 1982 that said as many as 50,000 early deaths could be caused by a reactor accident at Indian Point...
...part, Diaz insists that the improvements made in the nation's nuclear plants since 9/11 are adequate. They have included adding physical barriers, checking approaching vehicles at greater stand-off distances and improving coordination with local police and military authorities. Says the NRC chief: "Any terrorist who looks at one of these facilities is going to say, 'This is a hardened target, and I'm not going to have any confidence that I am going to be successful [attacking it].'" Plants have also improved training for guards and capped their workweeks at 72 hours to eliminate the not-uncommon tendency...
...NRC chief says that when it comes to hiring, plant operators are using "a much finer-toothed comb" than before 9/11 to keep troublemakers out. Potential employees are screened through numerous databases, checked for, among other things, mental-health problems, criminal records and questionable behavior in previous jobs. The NRC's confidence in its "insider mitigation program" is so high that the DBT specifically rules out the need to defend against an "active violent insider"--a turncoat employee willing to shoot and kill fellow workers. The DBT does consider the possibility of a single, nonviolent insider working with the terrorists...
...Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in southeastern Pennsylvania is a good place to see some of the enhancements ordered by the NRC after 9/11. The facility is newly ringed with 990 11-ton concrete blocks and $200-a-foot fencing topped with razor wire. Ten new guard towers--some six stories high--give armed guards broad vistas of possible approaches to the plant. "Since 9/11 we have more security officers here, and we've enhanced their weaponry," says Jeff Benjamin, a vice president of Exelon Corp., which operates the plant on the bank of the Susquehanna River. "We have...