Defense plans for security at nuclear plants criticized

WASHINGTON -- A government defense plan for nuclear power plants assumes an attack would come from less than half the number of Sept. 11 hijackers, and they wouldn't be armed with rocket-propelled grenades or other weapons often used by terrorists overseas.

Such assumptions, say critics of the largely classified security document, could make plants vulnerable to a terrorist takeover even though the industry has pumped more than $1.2 billion into defenses at its 64 reactor sites in 31 states since the Al Qaeda attacks in 2001.

Because of the sensitive nature of security issues, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials declined in interviews to discuss specific details of the defense plan. They said the requirements, expected to be final later this year, will demand a level of security that is ''reasonable" from a civilian guard force.

''I'm not going to get into numbers," said Michael Weber, deputy director of the NRC's office of security and incident response, who has been closely involved in developing the defense plan, known as the Design Basis Threat, or DBT.

Various sources, including congressional investigators, private watchdog groups, and industry representatives with access to NRC officials, say the defense plan assumes an attack force of roughly double the number that had been used in government planning before the 9/11 attacks. Back then, plants were required to anticipate no more than four adversaries, including an ''insider" accomplice.

Nineteen Al Qaeda terrorists were involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The NRC ''should require defenses against attacks . . . by groups at least as large as that involved in the 9/11 attacks," attorneys general from seven states wrote the agency last year, expressing concern that the upgraded defense plan falls well short of that number. The states together have 31 of the nation's 103 commercial power reactors.

''Instead of sizing the DBT on the actual threat, the NRC bases security standards on what the NRC, or perhaps the nuclear industry, believes a private guard force can be expected to handle," says Peter Stockton, a former security adviser at the Energy Department and now with the Project on Government Oversight, a private watchdog group.

Stockton said he has learned the commission rejected staff recommendations to require guard forces at reactors to be capable of defending against an attack force armed with a variety of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, powerful ''platter" explosive charges capable of penetrating 6 feet of concrete, and homemade torpedoes.

Those NRC decisions were confirmed by industry and congressional sources who are familiar with the deliberations on the defense plan, but spoke only on condition of anonymity.

''We feel pretty good on balance that we have the right level of protection," says Steven Floyd, vice president for regulatory affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry lobbying group.