Nuclear safetyOhio’s Perry nuclear power plant was vulnerable to sabotage
A report issued last week said that operators at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio found a vulnerability in the security of the plant last year, and that that vulnerability could have put the public in harm’s way. The utility operating the nuclear plant reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the plant’s security program for monitoring underground pathways and other unattended openings were insufficient to detect and prevent unauthorized access to the protected area.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) issued a report last week stating that operators at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant found a vulnerability in the security of the plant last year, and that that vulnerability could have put the public in harm’s way.
Cleveland.com reports that according to UCS, the vulnerability could have allowed outsiders to gain access to the plant due to an issue with underground trenching or piping , but the group did not identify the location of the tunnels at the plant.
“Perry’s owner informed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that its security program for monitoring underground pathways and other unattended openings were insufficient to detect and prevent unauthorized access to the protected area,” the report states.
The report also states that if the discovery were not made, there would have been a potential for a dire situation to develop.
“In the past, other owners have found similar problems,” the report notes. “For example, the very large diameter pipe carrying cooling water from the nearby lake, river, or ocean to the plant becomes a very large tunnel when the plant is shut down and the cooling system is turned off. And underground concrete trenches carrying electrical cables into the plant have sometimes been found to have sufficient space to allow individuals to crawl through.”
Other security measures at the plant included armed security guards, prison-like fences surrounding the complex, and locked buildings.
According to Jennifer Young, a spokeswoman for FirstEnergy Corporation of Akron, which owns the Perry plant, the company discovered the issue on its own. Young also said, “this was not an event or near-miss. At no time was plant security breached,” but she declined to go into more detail due to federal security rules.
The NRC sent a special inspection team to the plant and issued a citation for security violation, but the violation was not described in the report.
When Yong was pushed for a more thorough explanation of the problem, she gave a written statement.
“U.S. nuclear facilities, including the Perry Nuclear Power Plant, employ many layers of robust security measures, including physical barriers, trained site protection forces, access restrictions and other procedures to protect the health and safety of the plant, its personnel and the public from any security related event.
“Our nuclear plant security measures are continually inspected, assessed and exercised to look for opportunities to make our safe, secure facilities even safer. When Perry self identified a potential vulnerability, it took prompt and immediate action to report its discovery to the regulator and correct the issue.”
According to NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng, the agency cited FirstEnergy in the past because the company failed to meet new security standards that were issued in 2010.
According to FirstEnergy, the company has spent millions of dollars in the last decade on physical security and a police force at its three nuclear power plants to meet federal security regulations.
