UPDATE - US agencies mull physical upgrades to nuclear plants
Date: 11-Feb-02
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
"Clearly the threat design of nuclear facilities has to be reconsidered and there may ultimately be ... actually some bricks and mortar adjustments that are made to some of these facilities," Ridge said, speaking at the National Press Club.
Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network have been blamed for the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Now, U.S. officials are concerned that bin Laden's network could be plotting a second airline attack on America, this time on a nuclear power plant.
President George W. Bush said in the State of the Union address last week that al Qaeda was gathering information on potential targets inside the United States.
"We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world," Bush said.
Ridge's comments come after a warning from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last month that nuclear plants could be a target of an airline attack. The NRC has placed nuclear plants on heightened alert since Sept. 11.
Current NRC guidelines do not require nuclear plants to prepare for an airplane threat. Its so-called "design basis threat," a blueprint which sets security requirements, focuses mostly on ground-attack preparations.
The NRC is currently conducting a top-to-bottom review of its security guidelines in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We know that our nuclear facilities were designed to combat ... land-based threats primarily - explosions," Ridge said.
INDUSTRY SAYS PROTECTION ADEQUATE
The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's main lobbying group, says that current protections could be adequate to protect against an airplane attack.
"Clearly they weren't designed for an airplane strike, but that doesn't mean they can't withstand it," said Douglas Walters, an NEI security expert. "It's premature at least for us to say that we need to make physical changes to the facility."
Other nuclear industry officials concur that their plants are already adequately buttressed against an airline attack.
"If you were to slam a plane into (a nuclear reactor), ... most likely that plane would not penetrate the containment building," said Paul Gaukler, an attorney with Shaw Pittman, which represents nuclear industry clients.
Gaukler pointed to a test conducted in 1988 by the Sandia National Laboratories in California where scientists slammed an F-4 Phantom fighter jet into a stimulated nuclear containment facility at 481 miles per hour.
The jet shattered into pieces and only penetrated the containment wall by two or three inches, he said. Nuclear power reactors are typically enclosed in concrete walls up to 4.5 feet (1.35 meters) thick.
