Guards Found Sleeping at U.S. Nuclear Power Plant

A guard at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant videotaped other security personnel as they slept on the job last year, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Sept. 26, 2007).

A CBS affiliate in New York City later aired the videotape, which showed Wackenhut Corp. security guards asleep against walls or hunched over tables at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in York County.

The incident drew renewed attention to security problems connected to Wackenhut, which at the time the videotape was taken provided security for 31 of the 62 U.S. commercial nuclear power facilities (see GSN, Aug. 14, 2006).  Leading nuclear power provider Exelon subsequently terminated the firm’s contracts at Peach Bottom and nine other power plants.

“In the past, the standards were not our standards,” said Craig Nesbit, Exelon vice president of communications.  “They were Wackenhut standards, and that’s not what we want, and we’re going to fix that.”

“We had some difficulties with them from time to time,” added Exelon chief executive John Rowe.  “We felt the incident with the guards was the last straw.”

Along with power plant security, Wackenhut provides protective services at U.S. nuclear weapons sites.  The firm has been cited on several occasions by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman.

Friedman found that a Wackenhut worker in 2003 carried three handguns into the Nevada Test Site.  Security workers at the Oak Ridge site in Tennessee were required to work more than the 60-hour limit, according to a 2005 IG report.  A Wackenhut unit preparing to conduct a mock attack on the Y-12 facility in Tennessee provided information on the plan to the company’s security team there, Friedman reported.

“We did not use the word ‘cheating’ in the report, but it was,” Friedman told lawmakers last summer.  “The test was compromised.”

National Nuclear Security Administration officials said the cheating claim was an exaggeration, the Post reported.

Poor relations with its employees also could undermine the company’s ability to provide adequate security, experts say.

Wackenhut in June received $549 million in contracts to provide security at Y-12 and the Oak Ridge facility for the next five years.  The Energy Department, though, “is considering doing a feasibility study of federalizing the guard force at Y-12,” according to a spokeswoman for Friedman.

The problem does not lie solely with one entity.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to “connect the dots” between the sleeping guards at Peach Bottom and other complaints made against Wackenhut, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The agency is reviewing its procedures regarding handling of complaints of wrongdoing.  “More than anything else, we have to change the way the NRC responds to these allegations,” said commission member Gregory Jaczko.

Wackenhut nuclear security operations chief Eric Wilson in a presentation last year said that “we are now ‘down to the bone’” due to efforts by nuclear plant operators to reduce costs.  “The current business model does not yield consistently acceptable performance levels,” Wilson said.

Wilson has made several proposals intended to overcome problems at Wackenhut, including increased training and retraining programs.

“Eric has good ideas and comes across as sincere in wanting to implement them,” Lochbaum said.  “I’m not sure he will have the time he needs to make it happen.  Because Wackenhut treated its guards so badly for so long, many have lost trust in the company and view Eric’s talk as just that” (Steven Mufson, Washington Post, Jan. 4).

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