By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (Reuters) – U.S. nuclear power plants are
not adequately protected from threats, including the theft of
bomb-grade material that could be used to make weapons and
attacks intended to cause a reactor meltdown, a University of
Texas report said on Thursday.
Not one of the country’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors or
three research reactors is protected against an attack involving
multiple players such as the ones carried out by 19 airplane
hijackers on 9/11, said the report by the Nuclear Proliferation
Prevention Project, or NPPP, at the University of Texas, Austin.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) only requires
power plants to protect against attacks carried out by five or
six people, according to the report, entitled Protecting U.S.
Nuclear Facilities from Terrorist Attack. In addition, the NRC
does not require plants to protect themselves against attacks
from high- powered sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The three research reactors, including one in Gaithersburg,
Maryland, 24 miles (39 km) from the White House, are powered by
highly enriched uranium, that if stolen, could be used to make
nuclear weapons, the report said.
Power utilities have argued they have done all they can to
ensure security at plants without dramatically raising power
bills and that it is the responsibility of the U.S. government
to defend against attacks, said Alan Kuperman, the NPPP
coordinator, and a co-author of the report. “The problem is
that’s not occurring,” he said.
Kuperman said the government had made some progress since
9/11, when nuclear plants only had to protect against attacks by
three people. And the Pentagon and Department of Energy have
also recently worked on a common approach to protecting nuclear
weapons and fissile materials that could be made into nuclear
weapons, he said.
“That is a good sign of progress, but that does not address
the concern we have about nuclear reactors,” Kuperman said.
Attacks could take place not only at reactors, but at spent
waste pools, where water drainage could lead to a meltdown and a
wide release of dangerous radioactivity. They could also come
from the sea, the report said.
The NRC called the report, which was requested by the
Pentagon, a “rehash of arguments from a decade ago,” when the
agency and the country were reconsidering nuclear power plant
security in the wake of 9/11.
“The report contains no new information or insight,” David
McIntyre, an NRC spokesman. He said agency had strengthened
security requirements for commercial nuclear power plants and
was confident that these were adequately protected.
Senator Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and a
longtime critic of nuclear power plant safety, said more could
be done to make the industry safer.
“After the September 11th attacks, we discovered that
al-Qaeda had considered attacking a nuclear power plant in the
U.S., and we know that terrorists continue to search for targets
that would cause the greatest level of damage to our people and
economy,” he said in a statement.
“This new report details something that has concerned me all
along – that the United States is inadequately prepared for a
terrorist attack on our nuclear plants and there is much more to
do to guarantee that our nuclear power plants and facilities are
safe and secure.”
The NPPP report recommends that Washington require all
nuclear facilities, public and private, to protect against
maximum credible attacks and provide additional security not
supplied by private industry.
The report is available at: http://blogs.utexas.edu/nppp/files/2013/08/NPPP-working-paper-1-2013-Aug-15.pdf
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Brunnstrom)
