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Nuclear Security Changes at NRC Provide Cover for Industry and Regulatory Failures

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The announcement today by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that it would no longer be making publicly available the results of physical security assessments or enforcement actions associated with such tests indicates a serious failure of the nuclear power industry to adequately guard its vulnerable facilities, and a failure of the NRC to force more adequate security measures commensurate with today’s threat environment, according to Public Citizen and Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

“That the NRC is unwilling to continue releasing the results of such assessments can mean only one thing: they are concerned there may be significant failures,” said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.  “Nearly three years after September 11, there should be no reason to hide the results of these tests and inspections.”

The NRC expressed concern in a phone call with Public Citizen today that releasing the results of security inspections, if vulnerabilities were found, would raise a red flag for terrorists and others seeking to infiltrate nuclear power plants.  The results of the security inspections were previously published quarterly.

“Certainly, some security information is best kept behind locked doors.  But this blanket directive includes anything and everything, and will inevitably restrict the release of potentially embarrassing, but not necessarily dangerous, information,” said Brendan Hoffman, nuclear energy organizer for Public Citizen.  “Communities around nuclear plants have an inherent right to know what is going on next door.”  The NRC had no details today on whether plans existed to release aggregate data on the status of nuclear security nationwide that did not mention specific nuclear plants’ vulnerabilities.

One major aspect of nuclear plant security, force-on-force tests, was suspended in the aftermath of September 11 in order to be redesigned – a necessary step, considering the Government Accountability Office reported in September 2003 that such tests were “limited in their usefulness” due to practices such as hiring more guards than usual to defend plants during tests, and that NRC had generally demonstrated lax oversight.  The redesigned tests are set to fully resume in November. 

However, the new tests are not without flaws.  For example, the private security company Wackenhut was recently hired to act as “mock terrorist cells” in a staged attack test on plants.  But Wackenhut is also simultaneously under contract to guard nearly half the plants in the U.S. This conflict of interest provides no incentive to seriously challenge the guards.

“Security is one part of the Reactor Oversight Process.  Removing this part from public scrutiny is an erosion of a supposed transparency,” said Paul Gunter, Director of the Reactor Watchdog Project at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.  “Security concerns should be acknowledged and resolved, rather than shielded from the ultimate stakeholder in this process: the public.”

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