Former NNSA Deputy Administrator Blasts UT-Austin Nuclear Power Plant Security Study

Jerry Paul

Earlier this week, Jerry Paul, a former deputy administrator at the National Nuclear Security Administration, took aim at a study that came out of UT-Austin in August concerning nuclear power plant security.

The following passage comes from an op-ed that appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

These are dangerous times. Nuclear security is a serious topic. It calls for assessment by serious people willing to do the hard work of real research.

There is nothing wrong with an academician or anyone else, including political activists, raising questions about public topics including security and even nuclear security. But it should be done in a responsible way and should be based on facts.

If conclusions are to be marketed as university “research,” they should be backed by credible data, authoritative sources’ expertise and peer reviews by unbiased experts.

Merely using the word “nuclear” in a title should not qualify written work for a lower standard of academic or journalistic scrutiny.

Previously, NEI issued a statement critiquing the study, noting many of the same point. NEI's John Keeley wrote a blog post of his own on the day of the report's release:

[A] report like the NPPP's today also fails to acknowledge that the very type of terrorist attack alleged as a vulnerability necessarily represents an enemy of the state incursion within our country. It isn't the obligation of any electric utility to defend against that; that's a job for the highest levels of federal national security.

For more on plant security, please consult NEI's website.

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Department of Defense Makes it Official: It Never Requested Nuclear Security Report from Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project

Even though the mainstream media has moved on to other topics, there are still a number of other facts we've uncovered concerning the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project and its supposed relationship to the Department of Defense (DoD). Earlier this week, a reporter from NEI's Nuclear Energy Overview made a phone call to the Pentagon to get some clarification about the exact relationship between DoD and the published report. Here's an excerpt:

The U.S. Department of Defense did not request or validate a recent study on security at America’s nuclear energy facilities by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, a DOD official said.

“The Department of Defense did provide funding to the University of Texas at Austin, but did not request a report on that specific topic, nor did we validate its findings,” the Defense Department official said.

That's what we all suspected, but it's nice to get it on the record. We'll have more if events warrant.

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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.

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NEI Responds to NPPP Report on Security at U.S. Nuclear Power Plants

A few minutes ago, NEI issued a statement concerning the security of the nation's 100 operating nuclear reactors. The statement comes in response to the release yesterday of a report by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project. Here's the nut graf:

A report by a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas’ Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, released Aug. 15, is an academic paper developed for discussion among academia of the appropriate security levels at nuclear energy facilities. It is not a full assessment of security, nor does the author of the report have access to the safeguarded information that she would need to make such as assessment.

Like many such evaluations that examine the potential theft of uranium fuel from commercial reactors, the NPPP report fails to explain how attackers would be able to dislodge highly irradiated uranium fuel—800 to 1,200-pound, 18-foot-tall fuel bundles—and maneuver them from reactors, storage pools or steel and concrete containers past layers of elaborate security.

See our website for more information on nuclear power plant security.

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A Fresh Perspective on Nuclear Plant Security

Nuclear plants are widely acknowledged to be the best-defended facilities among the nation’s critical infrastructure. Critical, independent security experts share the industry’s belief that nuclear power plants are very well-defended, particularly in comparison to other elements of the nation’s industrial infrastructure. These include assessments from the the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The robustness of our industry's security isn't the easiest topic to address in great detail; appropriately, key security features for our sites are Safeguards Information. Still, this NEI video treatment of site security does offer some much-needed perspective relative to reports like today's from Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (NPPP).

There's a common/recurring flaw in many such evaluations of nuclear plant security: they ever fail to explain how attackers upon a nuclear power plant will be able to dislodge highly irradiated fuel, stored in tons-weighing 18-foot tall assemblies in reactors, pools, or in megaton dry casks, and maneuver them past layers of elaborate security measures.  

It's also important to remember that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission holds nuclear power plants to the highest security standards of any American industry, and industry exceeds those standards.

Approximately 9,000 extremely well-armed and highly trained security officers defend the nation’s 62 nuclear power plant sites. This is an increase of approximately 60 percent in the size of nuclear plant security forces since 9/11. These forces, a large percentage from military and law enforcement backgrounds, are drilled and tested regularly to ensure their readiness. Security officers receive hundreds of hours of training before they are deployed.

“Force on force” exercises that use dedicated teams of mock adversaries who specialize in attack strategies and tactics are part of the comprehensive oversight of industry security programs. Each plant site conducts quarterly and annual drills for each security team and undergoes an NRC-evaluated “force on force” exercise once every three years. Ongoing integrated response with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies ensures robust and extensive site protection plans. Based on its regular interactions with federal intelligence and law enforcement authorities, the NRC establishes the threat against which the industry must be protected and sets stringent standards that security forces must meet.

"U.S. nuclear plants were safe and secure before Sept. 11, 2001," Dave Kline, NEI's Director of Security, told me this morning. "They are even safer and more secure today, on the strength of more than $2 billion in additional security investment encompassing substantial physical changes and enhancements at plant sites; the hiring of thousands of additional, highly trained security officers; procurement of more sophisticated detection and access systems; and closer coordination with local, state and federal law enforcement, intelligence experts, and the military."

Some key considerations to keep in mind as you weigh allegations of lax security lobbed by academics versus the time-tested, ongoing assessments of this nation's top-ranking security professionals:

• Every commercial nuclear reactor in the country has conducted an aircraft impact assessment. 
• Industry's Design Basis Threat is reviewed periodically, and threat information is considered for DBT revision. DBT is Safeguards information, and as such can't have its attributes characterized.
•  Frequent Beyond Design Basis Threat drills are conducted, confirming margin in the protective strategies. 
• Contingency planning is in place for loss of large areas of a plant.  

Finally, a report like the NPPP's today also fails to acknowledge that the very type of terrorist attack alleged as a vulnerability necessarily represents an enemy of the state incursion within our country. It isn't the obligation of any electric utility to defend against that; that's a job for the highest levels of federal national security.   

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Wanted: New Stunt Men for Greenpeace

The French arm of Greenpeace is probably searching for a few new recruits after two of its activists were arrested today by French authorities for paragliding onto the grounds of the Bugey nuclear energy facility and dropping a smoke bomb. The stunt is nothing more than a political ploy by the organization to expose what it calls, “gaps,” in nuclear plant security ahead of the French presidential election. However, plant owner EDF assures the public that no such security gaps exist and that the plant remained safe and secure despite today’s criminal activity:

Safety at the installation was never called into question. Safety measures put in place at the end of 2011 allowed the detection and immediate arrest of the intruder.

But, some people still wrongly believe that the criminal activity proves just how easily someone could intrude a nuclear plant and wreak havoc. To their false notions, I’d like to point out a few facts about nuclear plant security.

First, simply landing at a nuclear energy facility via a paraglider is about the same as watching a feather land on a bucket of water. Nuclear energy facilities are highly fortified structures with many built-in, redundant safety measures, making it nearly impossible to penetrate the reactor and cause a radiation release.

The reactor is protected by roughly 4 feet of steel-reinforced concrete with a thick steel liner and the reactor vessel is made of steel about 6 inches thick. The steel-reinforced concrete containment structures are designed to withstand the impact of natural disasters as well as airborne objects with a substantial force.

Research by the Electric Power Research Institute after 9/11 confirmed the latter part of these scenarios in a 2002 study on the impact of an unexpected jetliner attack. The study results found that the structures that house reactor fuel can adequately guard against a release of radiation in the event of a terrorist strike by a large, fully fueled Boeing 767-400. The state-of-the-art computer modeling techniques used in the study determined that the areas of the plant most vulnerable to radiation release—including used fuel storage pools or the nuclear reactor—could withstand the impact forces despite concrete crushing and bent steel on the containment structures.

NEI has a video that shows the different layers of protection in a reactor containment structure and also the impact to a jetliner if it were to strike one of these elaborate structures (around the 1:30-mark).

As you can see in the video, a jetliner that strikes a nuclear energy facility at roughly 350 miles per hour (about the same speed as the aircraft that struck the Pentagon on September 11) does more harm to the plane than the structure. One can only imagine what dire consequences would come to a paraglider if he or she were to strike a nuclear energy facility at the same force!

Second, if the paraglider actually was a terrorist who had attempted to fly into a reactor and cause damage, he would have had a lot more to worry about—including the French military.

Threats of aerial attack are serious scenarios that are handled with great care by the military and air traffic control. These types of attacks are not something that government authorities, or nuclear energy facilities, take lightly and given such a scenario, there are provisions in place to “neutralize” the attacker. In fact, after the Greenpeace stunt, EDF’s head of the nuclear division Dominique Miniere confirmed this point.

The case of aircraft approaching nuclear plants is handled with great care and the French air force intervenes to divert airplanes violating--generally by mistake--the no-fly zone around nuclear plants, he said. "Sometimes airplanes get lost and they get the scare of their life," Miniere said.

This type of high-level, interagency security is mirrored in the United States, making U.S. nuclear energy facilities some of the best-defended facilities among the nation’s critical infrastructure. The utilities that operate the plant monitor the airspace around the nuclear energy facility and the government and the Transportation Security Administration protect the area.

After talking to NEI’s Security Director Dave Kline this morning about the Greenpeace stunt, he reassured me that U.S. nuclear plants are very secure facilities:

I am very confident that the U.S. plants would identify and neutralize any threats related to paragliders.

Put that way, I think Kline fully captures the ridiculousness of stunts by Greenpeace activists to show the “threat of aerial attack.” It only begs the question…what’s next? Hot air balloooning over a facility?

In the French case, officials were able to make the determination that the paraglider and his accomplice were not trying to cause harm, but rather, to make a political statement. This is why they arrested the activists immediately after the demonstration. In the future, I’d hate to hear about the copycat stuntman who meets a different fate and learns firsthand what the word “neutralize” means…

Photo: AFP/Greenpeace

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