NEI Nuclear Notes

Rod asks: Should we be concerned about guards sleeping in a "ready room"? Late last year there was a lot of hype about a series of cell phone videos recorded by a new security guard at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station of fellow guards dozing off while in a room identified as a "ready room". Having never actually been on the commercial side of the nuclear business, I am still having some difficulty with understanding why it would be a big deal. In the military, we have "ready rooms" where people gather for briefings and to await orders to take action. Generally speaking, the people on alert in ready rooms are in full gear and ready to move when called, but there is often a lengthy period of waiting before the call actually occurs. Sometimes days can expire without any call to action. As some wise observer once described the situation "hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of pure adrenaline." When in this kind of "ready room" waiti...

Since the beginning of the week, we've been busy following the developing story coming out of Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania, where a hidden camera video report by New York's WCBS-TV discovered a group of plant security personnel sleeping in the facility's ready room when they should have been wide awake and ready for action. Since word of the story first leaked out, Exelon , the owner of Peach Bottom, terminated Wackenhut's contract to manage the security force at the plant , as well as banished the officers in the video from getting back into the plant . In the meantime, we've got a bone to pick with WCBS-TV about one of the wilder claims contained in the report . “Experts tell CBS 2 HD radiation from a nuclear fire that starts at Peach Bottom would spread and could kill thousands of people as far away as Washington D.C. and New York City. It could leave 188 square miles uninhabitable.” Then, in the second report ... “Experts tell CBS 2 News th...

There's a lot of traffic flying around about the video we're seeing coming out of WCBS-TV in New York of guards at the Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant taking a nap in the plant's ready room . Some other things to note: Exelon, the owner of Peach Bottom, has terminated the Wackenhut contract at the plant, and the guards seen sleeping in the video have been denied access to the plant . That being said, it's important to note that nuclear power plants have layered defenses. In other words, there's a lot more to the security force than just those guards in the ready room, something that Freakanomics author Stephen J. Dubner found out when he visited Three Mile Island recently : That said, the security I saw at Three Mile Island was so tight, complex, and thorough that I think it would take a lot more than one sleeping guard to create a vulnerability. They wouldn’t let me photograph anything having to do with their security — the numberless armed guards, physical bar...

By now, I'm sure most of you have seen the news that NRC has sent a team to Exelon's Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant to investigate allegations that security personnel at the plant had been "inattentive" while on duty. That news followed items in the press from last week that one or more security guards had been caught on videotape sleeping on the job -- footage of which will reportedly be shown tonight on WCBS-TV in New York . Earlier this afternoon, Exelon announced that it had completed its own internal investigation , and that it was terminating Wackenhut's contract to manage security forces at Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant effective immediately. The following is the complete text from an Exelon press announcement: Exelon Nuclear today gave Wackenhut Nuclear Security notice that it will terminate its contract to manage security forces at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station. This follows an internal investigation in connection with Wackenhut security o...