Long before Bin Laden was assassinated, the potential for nuclear power plants to be terrorist targets was known--but kept quiet. That changed a bit May 11. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission officially demanded nuclear plant owners verify plant staff are capable of handling an emergency like a terrorist attack or a major fire, and begin providing regulators with information on maintenance, testing, and offsite support for unplanned events at nuclear facilities, said Marty Virgilio, NRC senior project manager, emergency preparedness. While couched in terms of “explosions,” regulators’ memo to nuclear plant owners, like Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, is meant to highlight the risk of terrorist attacks. So far, nuclear power plant owners and operators are under a voluntary guideline for “severe accidents”--as NRC director of federal and state materials Charlie Miller said May 12. “And thus, it’s not our oversight,” he added. A Mothers for Peace lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006 got regulators to not rule out a terrorist attack on Diablo Canyon in the commission’s decisionmaking. Still, the NRC would not reveal to Mothers’ lawyers the “secret” information. NRC staff noted it’s evaluating the survivability of nuclear plants’ power sources to mitigate blackouts and cope with outside electrical and other support in case of a severe natural or manmade incident. Miller said that the NRC expects responses from the owners of all the nation’s nuclear facilities by the end of this month.
