Protecting U.S. Nuke Reactors (or Not)

A bit more than three years, I wrote about how the government was actually cutting funding for security at nuclear plants. One the key issues was that the feds hadn't updated something called the 'design basis threat', which details the worst security threats plants need to be able to protect themselves against. At the time, the problem was that the design basis threat seemed to be lowballing the threat. As I recall, it called for plants to be able to protect themselves against a gang of all of three men. Which meant that if there were, say, 19 dedicated terrorist attackers, the 'plan' consisted of calling 911 and praying hard.

Now fast forward three years. Of course, the administration has done a bang-up job funding and otherwise ramping up homeland security. Here's this coming week's Time on the first-rate job done improving those issues nuke plants:

New York – A tightly held Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) document reviewed by TIME raises serious questions about whether the government has set security requirements for nuclear plants too low and allowed nuclear plant operators to provide security on the cheap, TIME’s Mark Thompson reports. Many guards working in nuclear plants and some senior security experts working for the U.S. government say the defenses facilities rely on are too meager to thwart an assault by a force the size of the one al-Qaeda put together when it attacked the U.S. on 9/11—Mohamed Atta’s band of 19 hijackers, TIME reports.

“The NRC and the nuclear power industry,” says a senior U.S. antiterrorism official, “are today where the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] and airlines were on Sept. 10, 2001.” Whereas the U.S. has spent $20 billion improving aviation security since 9/11, it has spent $1 billion enhancing nuclear-plant security, TIME reports.

At least they've finally created a solid Design Basis Threat. Errr... actually:

Terrorists may not need a dramatic skyborne attack to get the job done. They could take over a plant on foot. The key to understanding how the NRC has prepared for such an event is a standard called the design-basis threat, or DBT. The DBT is the regulatory worst-case scenario, the largest threat the NRC requires plants to train its guards to defeat, TIME reports.

“I don’t think they could handle a 9/11-size attack,” says David Orrik, a senior NRC official who retired in February after a 20-year career probing power-plant vulnerabilities. The guards themselves have doubts. “These guys are coming in to die. They know they’re not leaving,” says a veteran guard at a U.S. nuclear power plant. “Our training has increased, but I don’t think it’s increased enough to deal with that.” A guard at another plant agrees. “We don’t have the weapons or training to stop an attack of that magnitude,” he says. “Everyone feels that way. It’s a consensus of opinion.”

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 Nuclear Energy Institute 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 call for the cavalry, but they’d never get there in time,” Orrik says. “These things can be over in minutes.”

“Security at the plant is pathetic,” says Kathy Davidson’s former chief guard trainer at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant south of Boston. “It’s just too confusing.”

This kind of security stuff is guesswork. And frankly, I think it's tempting to get a bit hysterical about it all. You can't prepare against every eventuality. And there are always going to be cost-benefit issues. But that just means there needs to be a good debate about where to draw the line.

P.S. It's worth looking again at the quote above from David Orrick, and then taking a look at, basically, his resume. That doesn't mean he's incapable of overstating, but he knows a helluva lot more than you or me.

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