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Protecting Nuclear Power Plants
Lawsuit gives peek inside security procedures at TMI
By Garry Lenton
The Patriot-News, PA
July 23, 2006

When the federal government ordered the nation's nuclear power plants to beef up security after Sept. 11, the owner of Three Mile Island hired a top security consulting firm to help it figure out how to do it.

But Exelon Nuclear, which owns 10 nuclear plants, including TMI, Peach Bottom and Limerick in Pennsylvania, balked at the $300 million cost of Global Security's recommendations. So, in the spring of 2003, with only 18 months to go before an Oct. 29, 2004, deadline for compliance, Exelon decided to develop its own plan -- which cost $100 million.

The company met U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements, but the rush to finish the job and the cost-cutting measures rankled some of the men and women who defend the plants from terrorist attacks, according to John Jasinski, a former security chief for The Wackenhut Corp.

Jasinski served four years as director of nuclear operations for Wackenhut, a position that put him in charge of security forces at Exelon's three Pennsylvania plants and Oyster Creek, N.J. Exelon hired Wackenhut to protect its plants.

He was fired last June. He filed a lawsuit against Wackenhut and Exelon alleging he was let go because he pushed too hard to have security issues resolved.

Company officials denied the allegation. Wackenhut attorney Donn Meindertsma said Jasinski was fired because he refused to work with his immediate supervisors.

The suit, settled out of court last week after two days of testimony, provided a rare peek at security procedures inside this small portion of Exelon's nuclear fleet.

Jasinski's court documents describe a company that tried to meet federal security requirements as cheaply as possible, and the effect those shortcuts had on worker safety and moral at the plants.

Guard towers built at the sites to give security officers better visibility and lines of fire were viewed as unsafe and vulnerable to attack, according to Jasinski.

"When they started to arrive in 2004, the Wackenhut security guards started complaining about the [tower's] poor protection from small-weapons fire and explosives," according to the complaint Jasinski filed with the U.S. Department of Labor.

The towers use a spiral staircase to reach the command post. Officers complained that the stairs were hard to get up and down because their weapons and other gear frequently got caught in railings.

The stairs also were slippery. Global Security recommended concrete stairs with landings, according to Jasinski.

There were other problems, too. Rain leaked through gun portals, making floors and stairs slippery; water leaked into electrical outlets that were positioned just below the portals; and heating and air-conditioning units didn't work well.

Control panels used by the officers to operate vehicle barriers on the ground were in the wrong place. Officers said they had to turn their back to the vehicle checkpoints to operate the controls.

"Exelon's decision to go cheap on ... compliance led inevitably to difficulties for the rank-and-file security staff, conflicts about how to cope, tension about whether respondents could get away with the skimping, and the formation of cliques and alliances that would stymie any team effort to comply," the complaint said.

Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for AmerGen, the Exelon subsidiary that operates TMI, acknowledged some of the complaints raised by Jasinski, but said they were corrected.

"We have now spent $150 million since Sept. 11. That's a major investment," he said.

TMI's security systems comply with NRC requirements, DeSantis said. The problem is that the NRC refuses to say what those standards are, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group.

Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the NRC required nuclear plants to be capable of repelling an attack by four armed people with help from an insider and carrying a bomb. After the attacks, the agency changed the standard but cloaked it in secrecy.

Published reports, however, including one released in April by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, suggest the NRC's requirements might not be stringent enough to defeat a terrorist assault.

The NRC does not expect terrorists to use rocket-propelled grenades.

The GAO reported that the NRC downgraded some requirements after meetings with industry representatives. Doing so, the GAO wrote, created the appearance "that changes were made based on what the industry considered reasonable and feasible to defend against rather than on what an assessment of terrorist threat called for."

Current and former security officers at TMI, speaking on the condition that they not be identified, said they could defeat the kind of terrorist attack defined by the NRC.

"The problem," one officer said, "is that the [NRC requirement] isn't exactly realistic."

The lookout posts are vulnerable to some of the heavier weapons terrorists have been known to use, the officer said.

"Rocket-propelled grenades would turn the tower into a casket," he said.

GARRY LENTON: 255-8264 or glenton@patriot-news.com

http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1153619719157940.xml&coll=1&thispage=2