Word: planting
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Another issue is the lack of imagination in the scenarios used for training guards at private plants. TIME is refraining from publishing DBT specifics on the weapons that nuclear plants must defend against, but the relatively small arsenal that the NRC gives the "attackers" in its drills doesn't impress Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican. The DBT attack force is barred from using many of the weapons detailed in the opening scenario of this story, but, says the Congressman, "if I were a terrorist, I'd feel more than free to use them." The agency doesn't require defenses...
According to the NRC and the NEI, a force as big as Atta's band or anything bigger than the DBT is an "enemy of the state." That means it's the Pentagon's problem. "We recognize that there can be threats to our plants that are greater than what is defined by the DBT," Marvin Fertel, chief nuclear officer of the NEI has told Congress. "Although our security would provide an initial deterrence, at some point such threats are the responsibility of the Federal Government." That wouldn't necessarily do the plant's defenders any good, though. "They could...
...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...
...Kathy Davidson's experience is any measure, there is a question whether plant security forces could even beat the DBT. Until May, Davidson was the chief guard trainer at Pilgrim Nuclear Station, south of Boston. The 16-year employee says she was fired from her $75,000-a-year job for complaining about poor security at the plant. Wackenhut Corp., the giant security company that employed her, says she was terminated for failing to improve security. "Security at the plant is pathetic," says Davidson. "It's just too confusing." Because there were too few guards, she says, each...
...stakes could scarcely be higher. The toll of the 9/11 attacks would probably pale alongside a successful attack on a nuclear plant near a major metropolitan area. A recent study by Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, estimates that if terrorists triggered a meltdown at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, 35 miles north of New York City, as many as 44,000 people could die from radiation poisoning within a year, and as many as 518,000 could perish eventually from cancers spawned by the attack. Millions of people in the greater New York area...