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Some nuclear-security officials privately call the design-basis threat a "funding basis threat," suggesting the threat has been scaled back to meet the bottom line of what the industry was willing to pay for security. "The NRC is basically saying that what they're doing is as much as you can expect private industry to pay for," says Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.
The nation's big nuclear power companies seem to be making enough money to hire more guards, who earn an average of $35,000 annually. Chicago-based Exelon Corp., for example, whose 17 reactors make it the largest nuclear-plant operator in the U.S., saw its power-generation unit triple its income in the first quarter of 2005 compared with first quarter 2004, from $102 million to $320 million. Operators may be worried about future profits, since the increasing move to deregulate electricity has forced most nuclear plants to compete with other electricity producers, all of whom are seeking to sell power to utilities as cheaply as possible.
Even if the current security standards are sufficient, there is some question as to whether they will be properly enforced. Last year the NRC approved the NEI's request to hire the Wackenhut Corp. to test security at the nation's plants. Such exercises--suspended after 9/11, pending improvements--resumed last fall. Each plant is to be tested once every three years, which means the British-owned Wackenhut is running fake attacks twice a month.
But Wackenhut also provides security at about half the nation's nuclear reactors. "The very company that makes a living guarding nuclear power plants is also testing nuclear power plants' security," says Congressman Markey. "It's like a take-home exam." No one in the industry has forgotten that just before a mock attack against a DOE facility in 2003, Wackenhut "attackers" tipped off Wackenhut guards about the particulars of the drill. Under the new rules, NRC referees are supposed to pay close attention to ensure that Wackenhut's fake attackers aren't holding back when they launch a mock strike against a plant Wackenhut workers are defending. "It's going to be pretty obvious if the adversary force is taking it easy," says Richard Michau, president of Wackenhut's nuclear-services division. The NRC's Diaz says hiring Wackenhut was necessary to get a beefed-up fake-attack force on the job quickly. "I believe we have reached a very good compromise," he says, "with the NRC owning the exercise and Wackenhut planning for it."
The National Academy of Sciences raised a new issue when it released a report in April assessing the dangers posed by the 43,600 tons of spent nuclear fuel now resting in cooling pools at all 64 power plants across the country. Choking off the water that cools these pools could trigger a radioactive fire that some scientists believe could cause as much death and disease as a reactor meltdown. The panel of the N.A.S., which is private but has a mandate to advise the Federal Government on scientific matters, said it couldn't determine whether the plants and their spent-fuel pools could be defended against attack because the NRC decided the panel "did not have a need to know this information." But the report cast aspersions on the NRC's assessments of terrorist threats to nuclear plants, saying the agency does not consider the most lethal possibilities.