Some Final Thoughts on the Nuclear Plant Security Report by Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project

As our readers will recall, we spent a considerable amount of time last week responding to a "study" issued by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project on the security of nuclear energy facilities here in the U.S. Over the weekend, Jim Conca, a blogger for Forbes, took a closer look at the report, and made a number of interesting points (emphasis added in bold):

Those of us who have actually worked within the nuclear complex can tell you this study is grossly flawed. You need only read the limited source materials the author used in making her case and the absence of any references that contradict her thesis. And the lack of any expert review.

But if you read the press on this report, it sounds like it was actually commissioned by the “Office of the Secretary of Defense, which provided financial support for the research”. Inquiries to DoD say the report was not requested by the department. DoD just funds the program as a whole at the University and has no knowledge what’s coming out, until it’s out. We all know how this works.

There was no expert peer review, and the report only represents speculations of the student and her advisor. Even the cartoon on the front page is childish. The authors confuse nuclear weapons with nuclear energy, and have no first-hand knowledge of the security aspects of these facilities, since they have no access to such highly classified information.

But hey, just wing it! What could go wrong?

What’s stranger yet is that UT has an amazing number of nuclear experts, any one of whom could have reviewed this report, if asked. UT even has Dale Klein, former NRC chairman and nuclear security expert at the Pentagon (March 5, 2010 Speech). Why was he purposefully ignored?

One other important point that the media missed: Alan J. Kuperman, the head of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, isn't a neutral academic. In fact, he used to work for the avowedly anti-nuclear Greenpeace. The reference is included in his online bio.

One wonders why that reference wasn't mentioned during last week's media frenzy.