U.S. Response:  Report Faults Nuclear Plant Security

Security personnel at New York’s Indian Point nuclear plant believe the facility may be unprepared for a terrorist attack, the New York Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 24).

“Only 19 percent of the security officers stated that they could adequately defend the plant after the terrorist event of Sept. 11,” said a recently released report commissioned by the plant’s owner in January this year after complaints from guards.  Keith Logan, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigator, interviewed more than 50 security guards for the report.

The report examined the fitness of the guards, the tests that measure their fitness and the plant’s security equipment.

Many of the weaknesses pointed out in the report have been addressed, said James Streets, a spokesman for the plant’s owner, Entergy Nuclear Northeast.  Entergy has installed a new perimeter fence, concrete barriers, new security cameras and bullet resistant protection for guards, the Times reported.

“We took it seriously,” Streets said of the report.  “And we took appropriate actions to address the findings in it,” he added.

In interviews conducted after the report was released, however, guards said that many of the report’s findings — including faulty alarm systems mended with tape — have not been addressed.  Plant personnel also told of rigged security drills, out-of-shape guards and security personnel showing up for work drunk.  Foster Zeh, a security sergeant at the plant, said that he twice reported a security officer reporting for work “drunk as a skunk,” but the officer was sent home without punishment.

There is no official record of any such incident, said Streets.  “So I really wonder whether that’s true or not,” he said regarding the reports of drunkenness.  Zeh is currently on paid suspension, which he said he believes he is a result of his complaints about lax security (Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times, Dec. 8).

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International Response:  IMO Looks to New Shipping Security Codes

The U.N. International Maritime Organization plans to meet Monday to pass new security regulations pushed by the United States as necessary, but criticized by others as “draconian” and expensive.

Regulations from the International Ship and Port Security Code are expected to be made into law as amendments to the Safety of Life at Sea Convention, the Financial Times reported today (see GSN, Nov. 6).

The U.S. Container Security Initiative has provided much of the impetus behind the new code, which would designate responsibilities for gathering information and detecting threats to shipping and ports (see GSN, Nov. 27).  A range of security levels would prompt different sets of security procedures in ports and on vessels.  On board, some crew members would be responsible for controlling and monitoring ships.  The new proposals might be amended, but they are expected to be passed in some form, the Financial Times reported.

The cost of implementing the new regulations has not been discussed in the effort to craft the code, said David Whitehead of the British Ports Association.  Those figures are being assessed now, according to the Times, and European port officials have said that the burden should fall on governments.

The U.S. container initiative has already placed burdens on shipping and the cost of future controls is difficult to estimate, said Chris Koch of the World Shipping Council.  Implementing the regulations included in the U.S. initiative has been like “trying to drink out of a fire hose,” Koch said.

“European transport operators feel they are being railroaded into all sorts of draconian measures,” one international trade official said (Toby Shelley, Financial Times, Dec. 5).

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