Wackenhut and Nuclear Power Plant Security

A little more than an hour ago, Instapundit linked to a story on Facing South dealing with Wackenhut and its work providing security for government nuclear facilities. Also mentioned is the fact that Wackenhut provides security for 31 nuclear power plants, and was employed by NEI to perform what are called "Force on Force" exercises designed to test site security.

The post at Facing South is more or less a carbon copy of the talking points you'll find over at eyeonwackenhut.comm, a Web site operated by the Service Employee International Union which represents security personnel at a number of plants.

One important point: Though Facing South and Instapundit just discovered the SEIU site today, it's been up for quite a while. When it comes to nuclear plant security, I'll just refer to this October 2004 press release we issued when all of the nation's nuclear power plants had met the deadline for enhancing security at every facility:

To meet the NRC's security requirements, the nuclear power plants that provide electricity to one of every five U.S. homes and businesses have taken the following measures:

· increased the size of their paramilitary security forces by 60 percent to a total of 8,000 officers;

· made substantial physical improvements to provide additional protection against vehicle bombs and other potential terrorist assaults;

· increased training for security officers;

· established a rigorous "force on force" mock adversary exercise regime;

· increased security patrols;

· added more security posts;

· increased vehicle standoff distances;

· tightened access controls; and

· enhanced coordination with state and local law enforcement.

In total, the commercial nuclear industry has spent more than $1.2 billion since 9-11 on security enhancements. If you'd like to investigate the issue further, visit our archive on Safety and Security. Over the Summer, we were pretty active in rebutting many of the charges that were leveled by Time in a feature that ran in June. Click here and here for more information on that.

UPDATE: To deal specifically with the Wackenhut charge, I'll quote from an article that ran in The Hill back in 2004 where our CNO, Marv Fertel was quoted:

The industry has spent $1 billion [now totaling $1.2 billion -- EMc] on security upgrades, including the hiring of an additional 3,000 security officers, said Marvin Fertel, NEI vice president and chief nuclear officer.

"It is anything but business as usual," he said of the industry's efforts to improve security since Sept. 11.

Wackenhut, Fertel said, won the contract because of its extensive security experience.

The company now provides security for 30 of the country's nuclear power plants. An ex-Army Ranger with 10 years’ experience and two special-operations veterans will develop the mock attacks, Fertel said.

Wackenhut's bid offered a "very substantive capability," Fertel said.

To avoid conflict-of-interest concerns, the NEI required that the force attacking a facility where Wackenhut provides security could not include security officers from that plant, Fertel said.

Earlier this year, NRC Chairman Nils Diaz told The Hill:

Diaz defended the decision, explaining that the commission designs, administers and grades the tests. Referring to the commission's oversight of nuclear plants, Diaz said, "We're a pain in the neck."

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Energy, Politics, Homeland Security

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog