[NukeNet] NRC Afraid, Unwilling To Discuss Terror [Nuclear Power] Openly

[Bill Smirnow]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02nuke.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=nuclear&st=cse&oref=slogin

   Nuclear Agency Weighs Attack Threat at Plants

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By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: July 2, 2008
ROCKVILLE, Md. - Dragged by a federal appeals court into a rare public
discussion of the risks that terrorists could attack a nuclear plant, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission heard arguments on Tuesday from a California
group that the commission's staff had overlooked one category of potentially
serious attacks.

The commission, determined to dispose of the issue promptly, heard the
arguments directly instead of delegating them to administrative law judges,
the first time since 1989 that the sitting commissioners have heard such
oral arguments.

But the three-hour session was not a revealing one, largely because the
lawyer for the commission staff said there were major issues that could not
be described in open session without compromising national security.

The commission's ruling could be important because the spent fuel storage
system proposed for the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, near Avila Beach,
Calif., is being adopted at scores of other reactor sites around the country
because of the Energy Department's failure to establish a national burial
site for used fuel. At issue was whether storage casks that the Pacific Gas
and Electric Company wants to build at the Diablo Canyon plant could be hit
with incendiary missiles, piercing the steel and concrete shell and lighting
the metal cladding of the fuel. If that happened, plant opponents contend,
the fire could turn radioactive cesium into a gas, which would float widely
with the wind and then resolidify.

"I cannot discuss anything that concerns what scenarios the staff considers
credible," said Lisa B. Clark, the lawyer for the commission staff.

Ms. Clark added that the staff was aware of the mode of attack raised by the
California group, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace. "It does not alter the
staff's conclusion that there would not be any significant environmental
consequences of a terrorist attack," she said.

But the lawyer for the mothers' group, Diane Curran, said that the
commission staff had provided a list of the background documents it relied
on, and that these did not cover the threat described by her group's
technical consultants.

"The most obvious thing wasn't even on the table, not even remotely," Ms.
Curran said.

In calculating the threat of accident, the commission takes into account the
probability of the event, and its consequences, but the commission has long
argued that it is impossible to calculate the probability of a terrorist
attack and thus it does not need to take that threat into account when
approving installations like the cask storage.

But the mothers' group sued and demanded an analysis of that risk, and in
June 2006 won a favorable ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. The commission staff then performed an
environmental assessment, which is an abbreviated version of an
environmental impact statement, and concluded that there would be no
significant impact from the threat of terrorism against the casks.

The details of how the staff reached that conclusion were evidently murky
even to one of the four commissioners who heard the case on Tuesday. The
commissioner, Gregory B. Jaczko, asked how the staff could assume that the
risk was low if it could not assign a numerical value to the likelihood of
an attack.

"Well, you have to use your judgment," Ms. Clark said.

For accidents, she said, "we're very comfortable, and we understand how to
deal with probability, how to evaluate it in quantitative terms." But the
threat of terrorism "is going to take us outside of that familiar space,"
she continued.

Still, she asserted, "the staff's judgment, based on their experience,"
indicated that this was not a threat to the environment. The casks, she
said, were "robust."

Mr. Jaczko responded, "So we're down to the staff's belief that this
probably isn't going to happen?"

The chairman of the commission, Dale E. Klein, tried through questions to
make the case that even if an attack were successful, people would be
exposed to doses of radiation that were quite small.

The mothers' group was advised by Gordon D. Thompson, a physicist, who said
that the chimneylike design of the casks, intended to keep the fuel from
overheating, could help fan a fire. Ms. Clark argued that Mr. Thompson had
not seen the intelligence reports on the capabilities of terrorists, but Ms.
Curran said equipment to do the job was available to "subnational groups."

"It is clear that weapons are available that can penetrate a cask and start
a fire," Ms. Curran said. "U.S. Army-shaped charges are more than capable of
penetrating concrete and armor plating."


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