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HOMELAND SECURITY: MONITORING NUCLEAR

POWER PLANT SECURITY

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 14, 2004

Serial No. 108–265

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DAN BURTON, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

TOM LANTOS, California

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

DIANE E. WATSON, California

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

J. VINCENT CHASE, Chief Investigator

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Clerk

ANDREW SU, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 14, 2004 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Matthiessen, Alex, Director, Hudson Riverkeeper, Garrison, NY; David

Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington, DC; and

Marvin Fertel, vice president and chief nuclear officer, Nuclear Energy

Institute, Washington, DC ........................................................................... 115

Reyes, Luis, Executive Director of Operations, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, accompanied by Roy P. Zimmerman, Director, Office of Nuclear Security and Incidence Response, Nuclear Regulatory Commission ................................................................................................................. 32

Wells, Jim, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, Government

Accountability Office, accompanied by Raymond H. Smith, Jr. Assistant

Director; and Kenneth E. Lightner, Jr., Senior Analyst ........................... 73

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Fertel, Marvin, vice president and chief nuclear officer, Nuclear Energy

Institute, Washington, DC, prepared statement of .................................... 149

Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio:

Letter dated August 18, 2004 ................................................................... 30

Letter dated August 19, 2004 ................................................................... 22

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 4

Lochbaum, David, Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington, DC, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 141

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 13

Matthiessen, Alex, Director, Hudson Riverkeeper, Garrison, NY, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 119

Reyes, Luis, Executive Director of Operations, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, prepared statement of .................................................................... 35

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 19

Wells, Jim, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, Government

Accountability Office, prepared statement of ............................................. 77

Zimmerman, Roy P., Director, Office of Nuclear Security and Incidence

Response, Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

Information concerning force-on-force exercises ..................................... 110

Information concerning licensee employees ............................................ 108

(1)

HOMELAND SECURITY: MONITORING

NUCLEAR POWER PLANT SECURITY

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING

THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Platts, Duncan, Kucinich, Sanders, Maloney, Ruppersberger, Tierney, and Watson.

Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel; J.

Vincent Chase, chief investigator; Robert A. Briggs, clerk; Andrew

Su, minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority

assistant clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations entitled Homeland Security: Monitoring Nuclear Power Plant Security

is called to order.

I have a statement. I am going to catch my breath, and I am

going to ask the ranking member to start, and then I will make my

opening statement.

Mr. KUCINICH. I want to thank the chairman, as always, for his

diligence in matters of security in calling these hearings and indicate my appreciation for the attention that you pay to these matters.

Good morning to the Chair and members of the subcommittee

and to our witnesses here today. I welcome this opportunity to discuss nuclear security in open session. As both Congress and the

public have been stymied for far too long and getting truthful answers to many questions we have about nuclear safety and security.

Three years ago, two incidents shook the faith of the American

people in our security. The first, of course, was the tragic attack

on our country by terrorists on September 11.

The other less-known incident was the hidden problem going on

at the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor in Ohio. These are the facts.

In February 2001 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began investigating an aging mechanism that often caused cracking in reactors. As a result of these findings in late 2001, the NRC determined

that the Davis-Besse plant was at risk and should shut down by

December 31, 2001. FirstEnergy, the plant owner, resisted the

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order, claiming it should stay open without incident until March

2002. FirstEnergy argued that a shutdown would cause an unnecessary financial burden.

Rather than following its own safety procedures and shutting

down Davis-Besse, the NRC relented and allowed the plant to operate until February 2002. After the Davis-Besse plant had been shut

down, workers repairing one of five cracked control rod nozzles discovered extensive damage to the reactor vessel head. The workers

found a large corroded hole the size of a football in the reactor vessel head next to one of the nozzles. The GAO concluded in a scathing report on May 2004 that the risk estimate used by the NRC

to decide whether the plant needed to be shut down was flawed.

The NRC severely underestimated the risk Davis-Besse posed,

even exceeding risk levels generally considered acceptable by the

Agency. The GAO report shows that the NRC was ill-equipped, illinformed, and far too slow to react. The NRC’s reaction to DavisBesse was inadequate, irresponsible and left the public at great

risk.

The NRC later reported that the plant might have been as close

as 60 days to bursting its rust, damaged lid. Fortunately, the

health of tens of thousands of Ohio residents was not harmed, but

this was a disaster waiting to happen. Let’s talk about security.

So, Mr. Chairman, it’s very difficult for me to sit here today and

to listen without objectivity as the NRC and the nuclear industry

lobbyists tell us how much has been spent, how much security has

improved in the last 3 years. The facts and independent experts

tell us differently.

For example, we know that one security firm, Wackenhut, provides nearly half of the guard forces at our Nation’s nuclear sites.

Yet, as was documented by the Department of Energy’s Inspector

General, the report in January of this year questions surround

Wackenhut’s competency and objectivity to fulfill this crucial mission. The DOE Inspector General found that in simulation attack

drills, Wackenhut attackers told the Wackenhut guard defenders

the buildings that were being attacked, the targets at those buildings and whether a diversionary tactic would be used.

The IG also noted an industry-funded study found that as many

as 50 percent of the guard forces in a New York plant did not meet

physical fitness requirements, guards reported for duty drunk,

worked 70 to 80 hours per week and were allowed to repeat weapons qualifying tests until they passed them.

In spite of this poor record, and obvious conflict of interest, the

commercial industry still decided to hire Wackenhut to provide the

attack teams in force-on-force drills at NRC commercial sites. This

could be called a case of the fox guarding the hen house and anyone with a shred of common sense—it’s a poor decision. It undermined public trust and raises serious questions on who is making

the decisions at the NRC. Understandably, the NRC has decided

that the less it says the better. It has polled public security information from its Web site. It has restricted public access by public

interest groups to information by requiring none disclosure forms

or thorough reclassification, even if the information was previously

unclassified.

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Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit two documents for the

record. The first is a letter from Public Citizen to the NRC dated

August 19th; and the second is a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by a coalition of public interest groups dated August 18th. Both documents question the rational behind the NRC’s

announcement in August 2004 that ‘‘certain security information

formally included in the reactor oversight process will no longer be

publicly available and will no longer be updated in the NRC’s Web

site.’’

The same information, including performance indicators and

physical inspection information, was available on the NRC Web

site after September 11. It was temporarily pulled from the Web

site for review and returned to it after it was deemed to have no

value to potential terrorists.

What has changed to make this information unacceptable for

public review? Since the NRC won’t hold public hearings, it’s up to

this subcommittee to find out. Mr. Chairman, we all know that

these nuclear plants are decades old and they are decaying. Yet despite the billions of dollars spent to upgrade security at these nuclear plants, the NRC clearly has a long ways to go before it can

restore public trust in its position. I have to wonder if an incident

such as if this happened at Davis-Besse in Ohio happened today,

whether the NRC would tell us about it. The NRC should work to

allay public fears about public safety not to foster them. I really

look forward to hearing your testimony. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, gentlemen. At this time the Chair would

recognize Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your leadership in reviewing the issues of our terrorist attack preparedness, both at our

nuclear weapons facilities and our power plants; in your efforts in

reviewing our terrorist attack preparedness both of in our nuclear

weapons facilities and our power plants; and your efforts in reviewing terrorist attack preparedness of making America’s families

safer.

The security of nuclear facilities—both weapons facilities and

power plants, is an issue this committee has examined through

several hearings. In dealing with the security of nuclear weapons

facilities, the subcommittee has learned that DOE needs to update

its designed basis threat to meet the current security situation, including upgrading equipment, training and its security force.

Our nuclear power plants, though they don’t contain weapons,

are just as important to protect. They are designed and built to

withstand many natural disasters. But we must make sure as a

Nation that we do all we can to protect these energy sources from

foreseeable attack.

In earlier hearings, we found that DOE has not developed as

strong a relationship with DOD in regard to the sharing of resources and information. I look forward from hearing from our witnesses today concerning issues of coordinations of their efforts with

DOD and other Federal agencies, and whether they are taking all

available steps and precautions to ensure that the proper equipment is available to secure these nuclear power plants.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

The Chair would recognize Carolyn Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.

Well, first of all, Chairman Shays, I want like to thank you for

your consistent oversight on terrorism and ways to make our country safer. I think you have really done an outstanding job. I thank

you on behalf of my constituents.

I would like to welcome all of our witnesses, particularly Mr.

Alex Matthiessen, director of the Hudson Riverkeeper from the

State of New York.

The purpose of this hearing is to discuss how adequate are the

security measures recommended by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to protect power plants from terrorist attacks. We know

that since September 11, there have been some positive steps, but

3 years later, many still have serious and well-founded concerns

about the safety of our nuclear power plants. Required preparations for attacks are specified in the classified design basis threat,

the DBT. And a new DBT for nuclear plants is set to be implemented by the end of next month by updating requirements are

welcomed. There are several concerns about the thoroughness and

implementation of the DBT.

One of the greatest concerns is that these new security requirements do not include an analysis on the impact of an attack similar

to the one on the World Trade Center. The NRC has announced

11

that this review is underway, but no analysis has been completed.

This is 3 years later, and I want to know why.

I absolutely do not understand why it has not been done when

we know that after the September 11 attacks and after the 9/11

Commission reported, that on the list of initial targets proposed by

al Qaeda leaders, included planes attacking and flying into nuclear

power plants. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed recommended that, and

that’s spelled out in the 9/11 Commission report.

I would like to hear from our witnesses on the status this analysis. It’s a very serious threat to our country. Not only does this

plan not include the threat of an aviation attack. The GAO found

that it will take several more years before the NRC will have assurances that the plants are protected against the terrorist

threats—included in the new DBT—and they will not have detailed

knowledge about security at individual facilities to insure that

these plants provide the protections included in the DBT.

My understanding, based on the submitted testimony of the

GAO, that this is caused because the NRC’s review of the new security plans has been rushed largely superficial and because the

NRC reviewers are not visiting the plants to obtain details about

the plants and view how they work with the plants facilities.

Additionally, I am told it will take up to 3 years for the NRC to

test implementation of all the new plans through the force-on-force

exercises. And I would like to hear more from the witnesses on

these shortcomings.

Regarding the force-on-force exercises, I am interested to hear

from the NRC and the Nuclear Energy Institute on the implementation of these exercises.

Earlier this year NEI chose Wackenhut security to provide the

attack teams in the force-on-force drills at NRC commercial sites.

And we just heard from Mr. Kucinich, an outline of many of the

problems there. They did provide security at Indian Point No. 2 nuclear power plant, which is less than 35 miles from the district that

I represent.

The utility Interenergy, that had recently acquired the plant,

hired a consultant to conduct a probe of security at the facility and

found Wackenhut lacking dramatically. I have a list of problems

they had. Only 19 percent of the security officers stated that they

could adequately defend the plant. And I would like to place all of

them in the record.

But they have not improved from there, and Interenergy subsequently terminated Wackenhut’s contract as a result of their findings. I would like to put the findings in the record to save time——

Additionally, Wackenhut provides security for close to half of all

of the nuclear power plants now. And by allowing them to provide

the attack teams on a company with a troubling record will be basically having Wackenhut police themselves—and I refer again to the

testimony of Mr. Kucinich—where they were telling them where

they were going to attack and etc.

So I think that this is worse than the so-called fox guarding the

hen house that Mr. Kucinich referenced. It is not an apparent conflict of interest, but a blatant conflict of interest. And they definitely should not be the ones doing the attack.

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Finally, the testimony submitted by GAO states, and it was very,

very troubling, ‘‘the NRC does not plan to make improvement to

their inspection program that GAO previously recommended and

still believes is absolutely necessary. So first of all, I want to know

why they are not going to make the improvements that GAO recommended. For example, NRC is not following up to verify that all

violations of security requirements are corrected.’’

And I would like an explanation from the NRC on this important

question, and why they do not plan to follow some of the recommendations that the GAO believes is so necessary. So I thank

the chairman for this oversight hearing. It’s important and I yield

back the balance of my time.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlelady.

At this time the Chair would recognize John Duncan from Tennessee.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I remember a few days after the original and horrible events of

September 11, I was eating dinner and meeting with several Members of the House. And Congressman Callahan, who at that point

was a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, estimated

that we would spend—he said over $11⁄2 trillion over the next 5

years on security measures. I thought then that his estimate was

extremely high. No one challenged him on it.

But I know that just a couple of months ago, Federal Express—

just one company—said they spent an extra $200 million on security that they wouldn’t have spent.

After the last hearing on this subject, I sent letters to five Department of Energy laboratories and BWXTY 12 just to ask them

how much their security measures had increased. I got back these

responses. And a 40 percent increase in security spending on Oak

Ridge National Laboratory, a 51 percent increase at the Savannah

River National Laboratory, 50 percent increases at Argon and a

separate 50 percent increase at BWXTY–12.

In addition, we checked with the Tennessee Valley Authority,

and their security spending has gone up by 60 percent since September 11, and that doesn’t count $30 million extra that they spent

after some Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered some special

measures after April 2003.

Security is very, very important, and I don’t know if Congressman Callahan was way off on his $11⁄2 trillion, but there are always companies, there are all kinds of security companies now that

have gotten into this market and are doing everything they can to

sensationalize and scandalize these matters and exaggerate the

problem so that they can make more money.

And I am not saying not do anything with regard to security. But

if you stop to think about it, if we do—if Congressman Callahan

was anywhere close to being right—that’s $1 trillion or $11⁄2 trillion

that we are not spending on schools, medical research, highways to

cut down on the deaths on our Nation’s highways, or many, many

other good things, whether you might like libraries, national parks

or whatever.

And I think back to former Governor Gilmore of Virginia, who

was the chairman of the Commission on Terrorism that the President appointed. After his Commission studied the issue of terrorism, he sent this in a cover letter with their reporting, and Governor Gilmore said there will never be 100 percent guarantee of security for our people, the economy and our society. We must resist

the urge to seek total security. It is not achievable and drains our

attention from those things that can be accomplished.

I just think that we have to make sure that we take serious steps

about security, but we also have to make sure that we don’t give

terrorists undeserved victories by going totally ridiculously overboard on this and that we don’t do it simply because there’s some

companies out here that want to make some more money.

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So, with that, I think it’s good to keep holding these hearings to

make sure that we do have a reasonable and rational response to

some of these problems.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Ruppersberger from

Maryland.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. First, Chairman Shays, I agree with Mrs.

Maloney that you have done an excellent job as leader this committee and brings a lot of problems as it relates to national security

to the attention of this committee. I just hope that as a body of

Congress we can hope implement some of the issues that we have

learned in these hearings.

The issue of security with respect to nuclear plants, we know

that it’s very, very important. Our intelligence shows that al Qaeda

clearly has made our nuclear plants a target and that was also confirmed in the 9/11 Commission. Now, one of my areas of concern

is, first, the issue of privatization and how we manage privatization. I don’t have an issue with privatization. It works sometimes.

Other times, it is not necessary when we deal with government.

If you are going to privatize, whether it’s Wackenhut’s name has

been mentioned today or anyone else. If we are going to pay to

have someone other than government deal with the issue, we want

efficiency and we want accountability.

It seems to me that part of the NRC’s responsibility is to hold

all privatization, such as Wackenhut, accountable for performance.

You read in here that people are coming to work intoxicated or

they are not prepared or they don’t have the physical standards,

that concerns me. That’s our fault too as the government or NRC

because we have not held them liable.

Now, one of my concerns is the issue of consistency in national

policies and the regulation of nuclear power plants. This seems to

be some conflict between the NRC regulatory abilities versus the

privatized operations of the nuclear and commercial entities themselves.

The security standards have already been changed, for example.

We have a new design-based threat. DBT formula, which should be

a good thing. The required force-on-force exercises have been increased to once every 3 years instead of every 8 years. That’s a

good thing. The NRC has also issued more orders regarding augmenting barricades, security forces, patrols and restrict plant access.

The Nuclear Energy Institute has claimed an increase of $16 million per site toward security. Despite these changes, however, the

reality of lapses in the security provided by and controlled through

private industry remains.

And I believe it will take real partnerships to resolve many of the

critical changes we face in protecting nuclear sites. We must work

toward resolving this situation without putting undue cost pressure

upon the industry itself. I believe we as the government need to do

better and working with the nuclear industry regarding threats

and intelligence information. We need a true working partnership

that provides a more thorough examination of how information is

classified by NRC.

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We must not compromise secure security for public disclosure,

but there must remain a balance for the industry to help keep industries secure these nuclear sites.

Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

At this time, Ambassador Watson, you have the floor.

Ms. WATSON. I just want to emphasize our role, Mr. Chairman,

as the overseers, and I think that oversight has been lagging in the

last session. I thank you for bringing to our attention this subject

matter, but we are failing in our responsibility if we don’t call in

our witnesses, raise the right questions, and be sure they are performing in a responsible way. So thank you so very much.

I think that our national security depends on the protection of

our nuclear power plants, and what I have heard thus far in other

hearings, tells us we have a lot to be worried about. So I hope that

we will get new information in this hearing that will be helpful.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlelady and appreciate her comments

as well as all of the other Members.

I would like to put my statement on the record as well and say

that 3 years ago, the vulnerability of high-value structures to lowtech attack was seared in our national memory. Images of the collapsing Twin Towers and a smoldering hole in the Pentagon forced

an assessment of safeguards and vulnerabilities at other critical facilities, including nuclear power plants.

That assessment prompted some immediate steps by the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission, the NRC, to strengthen security at the

Nation’s 65 reactor sites. Last year, we heard testimony from the

NRC, the Government Accountability Office, GAO and others describing post-September 11 efforts to update security policies and

practices to meet a dynamic new threat environment. But much of

that testimony raised as many questions as were answered about

the rigor of the NRC regulatory process, the realism of emergency

response planning, the willingness of reactor operators to meet new

security mandates and the pace of needed change.

So we asked the GAO to monitor implementation of nuclear

counterterrorism enhancements, including some recommended in

earlier GAO reviews. Their initial findings depict a lengthy process

that risk becoming more theoretical than actual. A new protection

standard—or design basis threat—was not issued until April 2003.

A rushed review of facility plans implementing the DBT could be

completed next month. But that has been formulaic, wholly paper

exercise. The NRC will not have complete, site-specific data, from

force-on-force exercises to validate upgraded security plants for 3

more years. Even then, there may be no reasonable assurance

plants are adequately protected.

Suddenly—I think I am even one of them—the new DBT understates the true level of risk, meaning that security plants will have

to be modified and tested again. Despite persistent efforts by reactor operators and regulators to minimize the risks of containment

breach or spent fuel sabotage, surrounding communities and those

further down wind, take little comfort from a cosy indulgent regulatory process that looks and acts very much like business as usual.

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Findings of security violations, illicit promises of, correction, but

little NRC followup. Emergency response plans may not be current.

Lessons learned are not shared. And a proposal to hire an attacking force from the same company used to protect several plants

raises legitimate concerns about the integrity of future mandatory

force-on-force exercises. There is no question nuclear power plants

remain of abiding interest to terrorists.

However, real questions remain. How and when the seriousness

of that threat will be fully reflected in the substance and speed of

critical countermeasures.

As we continue to pursue these questions, the subcommittee sincerely appreciates the experience and expertise brought to the discussion by all our witnesses. We look forward to their testimony.

Taking care of some general business, I ask unanimous consent

that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place an

opening statement in the record and that the record remain open

for 3 days for that purpose.

Without objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted

to include their written statements in the record and without objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. These are the letters I would ask to be entered

into the record.

Mr. SHAYS. This is from the Union of Concerned Scientists without objection dated August 19th. We will add that to the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. KUCINICH. There is a letter right behind the it.

Mr. SHAYS. There is a letter right behind it. Let’s get that one.

Mr. SHAYS. And then a letter from Public Citizen dated August

18th. Both will be put in the record and without objection so ordered.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. We have and we are grateful to have our first panel,

Mr. Luis Reyes, executive director of operations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Mr. Roy P. Zimmerman, director, Office of

Nuclear Security and Incidence Response, Nuclear Regulatory

Commission.

What we are going to do is we are going to have them make their

statements. We will go through a 5-minute round of questioning.

We are then going to have the GAO make their statement, ask

them questions and then do a second round to our first panel separately afterwards. We appreciate our first panel being willing to do

it. It’s to everyone’s advantage to have that kind of dialog, and that

makes me feel good that you recognize that and I appreciate it.

So with that, we would ask you to stand and swear you in as we

swear all our witnesses.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record our witnesses are responding in

the affirmative. Is there anyone I should have asked in your staff

that may need to respond? If so, it may make sense for me to swear

them in.

Mr. REYES. No, Roy and myself are the ones doing the testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. That’s fine. That’s great.

With that, Mr. Reyes, you have the floor and am happy to have

with your statement.

STATEMENTS OF LUIS REYES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION, ACCOMPANIED BY ROY P. ZIMMERMAN, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NUCLEAR SECURITY AND INCIDENCE RESPONSE, NUCLEAR

REGULATORY COMMISSION

Mr. REYES. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, it is indeed a

pleasure to appear before you today to discuss some of the efforts

by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Mr. SHAYS. I am going to have you move that mic a little more

in direct line with you.

Mr. REYES. OK. Is that any better?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. Just turn it this way. Thank you.

Mr. REYES. To the efforts by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

and its licensees with respect to security at nuclear power plants.

The NRC has greatly enhanced requirements of licensees at nuclear power plants and conducted vulnerability assessments and

identified mitigation strategies in order to improve security and

evaluate potential threats. Nuclear power plants have maintained

a strong safety and security measures and were designed to withstand catastrophic events including fire, flood, earthquakes and tornados.

Security at nuclear facilities across the country has long been the

subject of NRC regulatory oversight, dating back to the 1970’s. And

nuclear power plants have been required to implement security

problems that are capable of defending against violent assault by

well-armed, well-trained adversaries.

Nuclear power facilities have likely been among the best protected commercial facilities in the Nation prior to September 11,

2001 and remain so today. However, the September 11th terrorist

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attacks on the United States brought to light a new and more immediate threat to our country.

To cope with these changes in the threat environment, the NRC

undertook a reassessment of its safeguards and security programs

to identify from actions, and long-term enhancements that will

raise the level of security at the nuclear facilities across the country.

Since the terrorist attacks, the NRC has ordered as licensee to

take specific actions to security at their facilities and to amend the

protection of the nuclear materials they possess. We believe that

this comprehensive act also effectively addressed major congressional concerns about the adequacy of security in the new threat

environment. We recognize though that security would be further

enhanced in the five legislative proposals that the Commission has

submitted to Congress which are appended to our testimony are

promptly enacted.

My full statement submitted for the record provides a summary

of the numerous post-September 11 actions and enhancement to

raise the level of security at nuclear facilities.

This includes a series of orders through all nuclear power licensees beginning in February 2002 to formally incorporate specific

compensatory measures into the search safeguards and security

programs. This enhancement of security included increased security patrols, augmented security forces, additional security posts,

increased vehicle span of distances and improved coordination with

law enforcement.

In the months since those orders were issued, there has been coordination with the regulated industry and representatives of the

Federal, State and local government agencies that would be called

upon to support the licensees response to a potential terrorist attack.

Also, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the NRC began

a reassessment of the design basis threat [DBT]. As a result, the

threat characteristic set forth in NRC regulations were supplemented by orders issued to power reactors and to certain field cycle

facilities.

The NRC’s currently reviewing licensee revised security plants

for nuclear power plants and certain nuclear fuel facilities. Nearly

2,000 plants in all, and expects that all the plants will be reviewed,

revised as appropriate and approved, and with few exceptions implemented by October 29, 2004 deadline imposed by the Commission’s April 29, 2003 orders.

Additionally, the NRC has completed an extensive set of vulnerability assessments and identified mitigation strategies for NRC license activities involving radioactive materials and nuclear facilities. These efforts have continued to affirm the robustness of the

effectiveness of these facilities, the effectiveness of redundant systems and defense of design principles and the value of effective programs for operator training and emergency preparedness.

We have continued to improve our security performance evaluation program, that is our force-on-force evaluations.

In February 2004 the NRC began a transition force-on-force program incorporating lessons learned during the pilot. The transition

program uses the characteristics of the DBT as enhanced as supVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:00 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98358.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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plemented by our orders to prepare for resumption of the full security performance assessment program in November 2004.

In conclusion, my full statement also includes prescriptions of

NRC’s revised base line inspection program, the status of security

plan reviews, emergency preparedness and sharing of information

with our stakeholders.

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. And I

look forward to answering any questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reyes follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. You may go to the next witness.

Mr. TURNER [presiding]. I’m sorry.

Mr. Zimmerman.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I have no opening statement. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. We will go to a 5-minute round of questions from

the members of the committee.

I know many of the members of the committee are going to have

questions concerning the design basis threat, their concern of its

insufficiency. The concern of force-on-force exercises and their lack

of reliable training and effectiveness, also issues concerning equipment and training.

But I am very interested in the relationship between DOD and

the protection of our nuclear power plants. In some of the information that we have indicates that power plants are not required as

part of their design basis threat to take into consideration attacks

by a foreign power or even perhaps the type of terrorist organizations that we see with al Qaeda, with the airborne threat.

Could you talk a little bit about the NRC’s coordination with the

DOD and how and where that occurs? Both in the level of communication, exercises, onsite equipment and response?

Mr. REYES. OK. Prior to September 11th, the NRC has always

had intelligence analysts. Subsequent to September 11th those intelligence analysts—even though they are NRC employees—are collocated with the intelligence agencies. So we have changed not only

the analysis of intelligence information the way we did it before,

but now we have collocated with the intelligence community. And

what that has provided is a more direct feedback for us—but we

now provide the intelligence community, information we didn’t provide it before. We have required our licensees to report to us activities that may observe around their facilities that may have some

bearing on the national intelligence information.

Now, in terms of the design basis threat, we have worked very

closely with DOE and DOD in terms of the intelligence to determine our design basis threat. As somebody stated, we do not have

in the NRC regulatory oversight weapons plans that have nuclear

weapons or plants that have nuclear weapons components. So our

design basis threat takes that into account and we feel is similar

to DOE facilities that are similar to ours. So we think that the design basis threat is similar now.

Now, I couldn’t bring all of the pictures because security information. It’s limited to the public. But some of the pictures here provide some of the features that the plants have. They compare to

similar facilities with DOE and DOD. What you don’t see here

today is technology to detect intrusion and some of the programs

that they have the facilities to make sure that the individuals that

have access to the facility have security clearance——

Mr. TURNER. I am going to interrupt you. Because we have a limited time period for the answers. I appreciate your giving us information concerning intelligence gathering and information with respect to detection.

Mr. REYES. OK.

Mr. TURNER. But obviously my question and my interest concerns the ability to actually defend these facilities. Intelligence is

only an element that gives you an understanding of what you are

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defending against or when defense is necessary. And detection certainly is way too late. So if you could please describe with respect

to the Department of Defense, NORTHCOM, where are you drawing the line between the facilities responsibilities, the DOD’s responsibilities and how are those actually being coordinated in a

meaningful way that actually transcends into defense.

Mr. REYES. Let me have Mr. Zimmerman give you the details of

our interface with NORTHCOM.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Thank you let me provide you with some of the

specifics. With regard to NORAD, we have interactions with

NORAD on a daily basis. We provide them information associated

with the status of our facilities. They know which facilities are operating, which ones are shut down, which facilities may be with selected equipment out of service. We have run exercises with

NORAD, where we have Amalgam Virgo or Amalgam Amigo are

examples, for example, of actual interactions we have had with

them on the phone, as well as with licensees.

There is also, have been calls that NORAD has had directly with

our licensees, but we have set up a protocol that happens very

quickly. If there’s an anomalous situation in the air that involves

NORAD, NRC and the licensee on a three-way phone call—and we

have been practicing that with our licensees—we have been involved in many exercises with the Federal Government and DOD

primarily in the lead. We have been involved with the TOPOFF exercises that have occurred. We are involved with TOPOFF planning

for next year. We have been involved in Forward Challenge, we

have been involved with UDO 4.

We are actively involved in and are interacting both with

NORTHCOM with regard to their ability to respond with quick response forces. They have been out to the sites. We have taken them

onsite tours. And they have had an opportunity to walk the facilities share their thoughts with us.

So we view that we have a very strong relationship with

NORAD, with NORTHCOM and we plan on making it stronger

through an effort we call integrated response planning. And that

deals with recognizing that the design basis threat we view as

what is reasonable for private guard force, where the Federal Government needs to come in promptly. DOD is an active player in

that effort of integrated response.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Turner.

Mr. Zimmerman, one of the things the NRC points to on their

Web page is a way that increased security is extending the perimeter of their facilities. Despite this, there have been two incursions

into nuclear facilities in the last 2 months. One occurred at Beaver

Valley in Pennsylvania and the other occurred at Pilgrim. If NRC

had indeed extended the perimeter, ostensibly to catch terrorists

before they get on the site, how were these individuals able to get

out into plant sites?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I think context is very important in this regard.

Without talking to the specific details—I am not sure I recall the

specific details—the area that we are talking about at these facilities is what is called the owner-controlled area. This is the area of

property that is owned by the licensee, but in many cases is far reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:00 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98358.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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moved from where the protected area where the vital equipment is

located. At some plants, it’s miles away from where the actual facility equipment is located. What we have done subsequent to September 11 is require that licensees conduct surveillance out in their

owner-controlled area to be able to identify the possibility of surveillance taking place on their site or as well as any plant,

preplanning for an attack.

We also called for licensees to mix up those patrols so they don’t

always roll around at 4, you know, hour on the hour. They mix it

up to try to keep any potential surveillance, you know, at bay. We

get daily reports that are made from the licensees into my office

that address the many instances where individual sightseers are

taking pictures of the sites, where the film is confiscated, explain

to the individuals the sensitive nature of the equipment that they

are trying to take pictures of.

There are close working relationships with the local law enforcement and the FBI to run license plates to look for any information

in the background of these individuals. It’s a very aggressive program—and addressing one of the other concerns that was raised

earlier, we share this information across the industry so that if

there is some information that somebody sped away quickly from

a particular location, that information is put on a protected Web

server so all sites have access to it and can be on the lookout for

a similar vehicle.

Mr. KUCINICH. I have a number of questions here, Mr. Chairman,

that will probably require—you are going to have a second round

of questioning? I know my time isn’t up.

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. I would be happy to yield to my colleague

some of my time. We would like to go just a 5-minute round with

this, and then they are going to come back after GAO has testified.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, before——

Mr. SHAYS. Why don’t we go through this. Why don’t we——

Mr. KUCINICH. My 5 minutes hasn’t expired.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. KUCINICH. I want to, as a personal matter ask you a question.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Surely.

Mr. KUCINICH. What do you think about the failure of your own

agency to provide information to the public about a hole in the

head of a reactor vessel. Is that a security matter that you have

any concern with, or is that somebody else’s job?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. To be candid, it is not in the realm of responsibilities that I have. I think better justice could be done to answering your questions in a different setting, perhaps with different individuals that are closer.

Mr. KUCINICH. You really don’t know anything about that, is that

what you are saying?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. No, I am not saying that at all.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you know anything about it at all?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. What are you aware about it?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I am aware of the fact that there was degradation in the vessel head that was late in being identified, through

a non-destructive examination. I am aware of the fact that the

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NRC followed the degradation closely and had identified a period

of time that it was felt that it was reasonable for that facility to

continue to operate based on the information that was available to

them.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, I just want to point something

out. And I don’t think this is tangential. We have a witness in front

of us whose job deals with nuclear security. I would submit that

there is a lack of communication within the NRC on issues of security that he just made a statement that defies belief of anyone who

claims that they followed this. So I am just going to take his initial

statement that he is really not responsible for this. And the gentleman is showing a lack of comprehensive understanding of what

the NRC’s failings were on this—and I am not going to attribute

that to his problem—I am going to attribute it to the responsibilities of the people who had the first obligation to let the public

know—should have also let him know, since he is dealing with nuclear security.

So I think one of the things the committee has already been able

to determine here is that you don’t have the kind of communication

within the NRC that would protect the public interest with respect

to security lapses of a mechanical kind, physical kind, inside. So

the security problems can come outside, but they can also come inside.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TURNER [presiding]. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. What have you done to protect our plants from

the possibility of a plane flying in?

Mr. REYES. Yes, we have——

Mrs. MALONEY. We have read in the 9/11 Commission said that

was one of their plots. So how are we protecting ourselves from

that?

Mr. REYES. The NRC has done a vulnerability assessment. That

includes a wide variety of aircraft. It includes smaller aircraft, all

the way to a large commercial aircraft loaded with fuel—an analysis of a limited number of plants that are typical in the design of

the power plants in the United States. What that analysis has

shown is there is a very low probability that the crash of such a

large aircraft into the facility would cause both damage to the core

and a significant radiation release that will impact the health of

the public.

And the reason being is that prior to September 11th, these

plants have severe accident procedures—they were procedures that

were mitigated or strategies that were to cope with events that

could not be foreseen by the design. Our analysis has identified

that more had to be done—and in fact the mitigative strategies

have been enhanced to cope with such an attack. Now that will be

the back end once the attack occurs.

At the front end, I think Mr. Zimmerman talked about our relationship with NORTHCOM and NORAD and the exercises and direct communication from NORAD to the control room in the power

plant to advise them if there is a pending attack.

Mrs. MALONEY. Do we have any planes in the air that would

shoot down another plane coming? I mean, we never anticipated

that a plane would knock down the Towers. So the main thing is

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to prevent it from coming in in the first place. So what do we have?

Are you working with the—you understand the security to basically

shoot down a plane if it ever got into the area?

Mr. REYES. Yes, our work has been with NORAD who had the

responsibility to intercede the aircraft.

Mrs. MALONEY. Now, in the prepared testimony of the GAO, they

say that the NRC does not plan to make improvement to the inspection program that the GAO previously recommended and still

believes that it is not necessary. For example NRC is not following

up to verify that all the violations of security requirements have

been corrected. Can you explain that? That’s a direct quote from

the GAO report that they are very disturbed that you are not correcting the items that they pointed out to you. Why not?

Mr. REYES. The GAO report relates to our followup of the corrective action—the NRC both on the safety and security site. And we

don’t think distinguish them—they work together—puts their effort

on the violations of biggest or higher significance. Now, what we

do is we put—confirm all the corrective actions for violations of

higher level, and for low level violations we do it in a sample basis.

Now that doesn’t mean we don’t know what was done.

What it means is for security specialists to confirm whether that

minor violation or violation of low risk was not corrected. But we

have an NRC office in every power plant. We have inspectors there,

and we are aware of the corrective action on small, low-risk violations. But we follow all significant violations with subject matter

experts, whether security or safety.

On the lower level, we do a sampling process. It’s a matter of resources.

Mrs. MALONEY. So, then, you are not following up to verify that

the violations of security requirements have been corrected for

‘‘smaller violations?’’

Mr. REYES. On a sampling basis we do.

Mrs. MALONEY. But you are just correcting the larger violations.

Can you give me an example of a smaller violation that you are not

correcting?

Mr. REYES. Well, they corrected it. We just don’t confirm specifically that it is corrected. I will have Mr. Zimmerman maybe give

an example of a minor violation.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. A minor violation could be an isolated case

where an individual had a lapse and didn’t record information

within a certain period on a tour or potentially may not have

logged it at all. We would view that as a violation. By understanding a licensee’s program, they have a corrective action program

that they are required to have. Their quality assurance organization will pursue that, determine whether it is an isolated case.

We also during our review—if we see something that indicates it

is potentially larger and has programmatic aspects to it—we would

continue to follow that trail. But if we see that as an isolated case,

the corrective action would be taken by the licensee. And then as

Mr. Reyes said, we do come back for the lower significance items

and do a sampling check to see if we have confidence in the thoroughness of the review of the utility.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Platts.

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Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your testimony here today. And I question our focus, I know, is about protecting our facilities from the terrorist threats. And I would like to

at least put on your radar an issue that kind of relates that if there

is an attack and our response and attentions come to my attention

in my local community, I would go right up against the Susquehanna River where Three Mile Island is—and certainly as a high

school student, remember 1979 very well—living a few miles from

the plant.

The issue that has been raised to me is if there would be an attack how we would respond to the attack, specifically for children

in day care, preschools, nursery schools, and believed by some of

my constituents that NRC’s oversight, along with FEMA, is not insuring that our NRC regulations are being fully complied by facilities regarding those preschool child care centers, and the State

plans that are in place. My understanding of NRC is your responsibility is really to improve the State plans for evacuation if there

is an attack or if there is an incident of whatever kind that requires an evacuation that NRC looks to the State and approves the

State plans?

Mr. REYES. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency

does that.

But if I could address briefly your concern. If there is an attack

at a nuclear power plant—regardless of whether it is ground, waterborne or air—right away, there is a declaration of high level

emergency. What that does is automatically gives the local government, the counties and the State, mobilizing their emergency plan.

And the typical arrangement—and I don’t know the one in Pennsylvania specifically—the typical arrangement is that when that is

declared, the local government already has prearranged decisionmaking on evacuating children, senior citizens. So the fact that the

facility was attacked without any consequences—yet in terms of release of radiation and all of that—because you declare a high level

emergency, you are already as a precautionary measure, very conservative, rolling and the offsite government agencies are already

moving.

Mr. PLATTS. The concern is that—and then that process, for it to

work, those plants need to be thorough and that the FEMA reviews

the plans.

Mr. REYES. Right.

Mr. PLATTS. Based on their finding and you issue a license that

yes they have a plan in place.

Mr. REYES. Correct.

Mr. PLATTS. Is that perhaps with some facilities in Pennsylvania

and perhaps elsewhere around the country that those plans are not

as thoroughly guarding these preschool age children even though

the regs require them to, to accomplish those children as well.

Mr. REYES. Yes, it is FEMA that has to do the assessment. And

they monitor the exercises and the plant and the fact that it gets

performed adequately. I just couldn’t——

Mr. PLATTS. So NRC basically takes the decision of FEMA and

just ratifies that decision that FEMA says, yes, they are in compliance, their State plan, their local plan, therefore the license is

issued?

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Mr. REYES. Yes, it’s called reasonable assurance. FEMA sends

out a report, and a certification that they have reasonable assurance that the offsite emergency preparedness actions, the plans

and the actions that they will take by observing the execution of

the plan and the exercises, etc. is adequate. And we take that certification of reasonable assurance and accept it.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. According to the GAO, NRC is not taking advantage of opportunities to improve the effectiveness of force-on-force

exercises and security oversight in general by implementing the

recommendations.

And I did hear you mention, you have gone so far with a lack

of resources. I would like to elaborate on that and tell us how is

nuclear power plant inspection information shared with the NRC

regional offices and nuclear power plants. So you can answer collectively.

The other concern that I have is that several months ago, we

heard about traditional procedures and traditional ways of calculating how an attack would take place on our nuclear plants. I had

problems with traditional. Because I think whatever enemy out

there we are facing is being very creative. And if we have a traditional procedure or formula that we use on the ground, what about

that comes from the air or over water? So you might want to address that as well.

Mr. REYES. OK. I would be glad to do that. Let me talk first

about the information sharing. All the findings, all the violations,

whether they are high or low or of significance, regarding security,

are reviewed by a panel which is composed of a representative from

all of our four regional offices and our headquarters offices.

And that’s to make sure that in fact they are properly being categorized in terms of their significance and therefore which ones we

need to do followup corrective action in detail and which ones we

do a sampling process. That information is shared because there’s

representatives from each one of the regional office and the program office. So those individuals share that within their own

group.

Then we also have very frequent meetings with the industry—

it’s called a security working group—where we share all the issues

that we have identified with them, and the security working group

from the industry then shares that with their counterparts.

We also have prepared a protected Web page that has those

kindS of information. Not only do we share that with the licensees,

but it gets shared with local governments and other interested parties that do have the appropriate clearance to have that information. So we do have a very aggressive way to share the information.

Now, we haven’t adopted every recommendation that GAO has

submitted. We haven’t dismissed them; we are considering them,

but we feel there is a very aggressive way that this information is

being shared.

Ms. WATSON. When you said lack of resources, would you elaborate, please?

Mr. REYES. We feel we have adequate resources, but what you

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nificance is. So Mr. Zimmerman provided you an example of where

a patrol officer had an oversight to log in as they conducted the patrol around the facility, and they have to log in exactly where they

were and where they are not going. That would be a relatively low

violation of our requirements, and we necessarily wouldn’t put the

resources there. If we were to find a more significant problem regarding training of the officers or the weapons not being in good

working order or something like that, we will put very detailed followup on the more significance, because they do have the more significant potential to affect security. So there’s a matter of grading

where our resources go to; they go to the most significant findings.

Ms. WATSON. I am really troubled by the fact that we are fighting an enemy of unknown proportion. It could be an American—

I will always remember Oklahoma—or it could be someone who has

merged into our society. They have a very different mindset than

we do. And I’m wondering if there is any activity going on that

tries to get into that mindset, because I think the September 11 attack was planned a decade in advance. And certainly we know by

the training, the time it took to train those who flew the planes—

and they went in and said we don’t want to learn how to take off

or land; that should have rung a bell. And they paid in cash. But

apparently they were more interested in getting that money than

in picking up the clues. And I am finding out there have been clues

along the way and we haven’t done a good job in connecting the

dots.

So I am wondering if we have a think tank that might be looking

at the creative ways that people, you know, watching us in an open

society might do us great harm through our nuclear plants. Pand,

finally, how does this fit into homeland security? How does the

NRC, what role do you play in terms of homeland security?

Mr. REYES. OK. Let me talk about—the concerns you had about

the potential adversaries and the modes and the planning all goes

into the intelligence community. What we do is we take that information, and, for example, when we consider the design basis threat

and when we do our exercises, we assume that all that information

in terms of what we call coordinated attacks—and we assume they

are coming from the ground, from the air, from the water, and that

they have an insider that they have. So all that is considered in

both the design basis threat and the exercises we actually conduct.

So also, we don’t go out there to try to do intelligence work. We

are the beneficiaries. And by having our intelligence analyst physically present in that community, we get that information and we

factor that into our activities.

Now, let me have Mr. Zimmerman explain to you how we work

with DHS, because we are an active participant in that effort.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. One of the things that we do with the Department of Homeland Security is we try to maximize our time that we

spend in their operation. And I will explain that. There may not

be a particular issue that is necessarily in our sector, but we will

try to send people to their operations center, even if there is an

issue that they are pursuing that is unrelated to the nuclear sector,

just so that we can get comfortable, get a chance to meet people,

understand what their protocols are. And we basically have a relatively large number of people that we are sending down there and

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getting badged ahead of time, so that if the bell does ring in our

sector, we have working relationships established. And if we are in

a reactive situation, we know where our desk is, we know what our

responsibilities are.

And when we do our exercises now, we have requested of DHS,

and they have been very supportive, to try a continuous improvement to make our exercises more realistic, where we want them to

play in our exercises now that they have been stood up. So we want

to send people to them, understand what issues they would have

in this emergency situation during this drill, and raise those issues

directly to us in real time in the exercises so that we can practice

and learn how we can improve our overall response to the Federal

Government.

Ms. WATSON. I will just finish up with this. I think intelligence

has failed to provide all of us with the information that we need

to prevent—not respond to an emergency, to prevent. And I would

hope that the NRC would definitely be looking at strategies, procedures, to prevent a nuclear kind of emergency, because once there

is a nuclear attack we are done.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. May I respond?

Mr. TURNER. Actually, we need to move on. Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You rely on private companies for the securities of the individual

plants. Right?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. That’s correct.

Mr. TIERNEY. All right. So we have 65 plant sites, 103 nuclear

reactors in 31 States.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Correct.

Mr. TIERNEY. And you sort of delegate that responsibility to private companies, and then rely on their report to you as to whether

or not they are complying with the various standards that you set.

Mr. REYES. No. We have direct observation of their activities.

Mr. TIERNEY. About once every 3 years, right?

Mr. REYES. No, no. That’s incorrect.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK.

Mr. REYES. See, the inspection program—and I think this is—the

GAO auditors are in the process of doing that effort, and they

haven’t been able to visit the facilities. So we have a security inspection program that looks at everything, from training to performance of the detection system, implementation of the program

for access to individuals, communications. The portion as far as exercise is on top of all that I just told you, and that is the final task

on the dynamics. That’s where we actually simulate adversaries,

and they actually come in and jump over the fence and actually

have access to—and we simulate the attack. But that’s only the

culmination of a large number of inspection hours by a lot of subject matter experts in security that come in unannounced at all

times of the day or night to check each one of the elements.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me interrupt if we can because are limited in

time here. So you are saying that your agency determines the

standards for training, and then you go down and you observe and

make sure that training is in fact occurring and being met and that

people are passing those criteria.

Mr. REYES. That’s correct.

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Mr. TIERNEY. And that’s no matter what the turnover there.

Mr. REYES. Correct.

Mr. TIERNEY. And then you are telling me that you are also

keeping an eye on how much overtime is involved, how many hours

these people are working on each shift on a regular basis?

Mr. REYES. We have requirements for that. We review the

records and we interview individuals.

Mr. TIERNEY. Did you want to add something?

Mr. REYES. What he was going to tell you is our inspection program has increased by a factor of five.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Since 2000. The amount of hours that we spend

onsite—this is separate from force on force—is we have gone up

fivefold in the amount of inspection hours that we are currently

spending onsite. The design basis threat that we issued in April

2003 is quite similar to the interim compensatory measures that

we put in place in February 2002. Our inspectors have already

gone out and verified that probably 80 percent of what is in the revised 2002 DBT is already in place.

Mr. TIERNEY. Are you subcontracting any of this evaluation

work?

Mr. REYES. No.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. It’s being done through our regional offices.

Mr. TIERNEY. And when you do the force on force, are you subcontracting any of that attack force work out?

Mr. REYES. No. The NRC reviews the training for the adversaries, the NRC decides on the scenario, and the NRC is there in large

numbers to observe the force on force. And we are the ones who

determine whether the performance is acceptable or not. See, this

is a big difference between DOE and NRC. DOE operates and regulates itself. We have a private licensee, but we are the ones who

do the oversight and we are the ones who determine the adequacy.

Mr. TIERNEY. But it is not your personnel that are actually doing

the force on force. You hire somebody to do that, then oversee

them?

Mr. REYES. The adversaries are not NRC employees. The people

monitoring them and doing the independent assessment are.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. We hire contractors that are experts in this

area. They are joined at the hip with the adversary team; they are

in the field with the adversary team as they are trying to make

their approach on the facility. They are involved in the preparation

aspect indicating, based on what we have been able to determine,

this is how I would attack the facility, so this is how you will attack.

The decision on how the attack is made is made by the NRC contractor, not by the contractor that’s going to carry out the actual

attack. But our contractors will go with them.

Mr. TIERNEY. So we no longer have Wackenhut watching

Wackenhut.

Mr. REYES. It never has been. We don’t know the misunderstanding, but it never has been.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. We do the full assessment. Wackenhut will pull

the trigger, but we will have somebody there to make sure that

person is taking the appropriate action of what he or she has been

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instructed to do based on us laying out what the scenario will be,

and then being with them in the field while they carry it out.

Mr. TIERNEY. We can maybe revisit that again later. Tell me, if

you would, about spent fuel storage security and why we should

feel comfortable with the way things are going there.

Mr. REYES. There is two kinds of storage of spent fuel. One is

what we call the pools or the wet pool. And those are inside all the

protected area of the facility, and all the security features that you

have for the reactor, you basically have for the wet pools. The dry

cast storage could be either inside the protected area or could be

sitting by itself within a protected area. And that also has security

features to it. The dry cast storage is more robust in terms of attacks and all that. So we feel very secure that it is—the security

is adequate.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Sanders.

Mr. SANDERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

As you know, gentlemen—and thank you very much for being

with us. As you know, we have a nuclear power plant in Vernon,

right at the southern edge of Vermont and right near the Massachusetts border. Recently there was a scare, as you know, when

two spent fuel rods appeared to be missing, and they were relocated sometime later. But that raised anxiety in an area where

anxiety is already fairly high.

Let me just ask you just a couple of questions. It seems to me—

and I don’t want to disappoint any of my colleagues or you—that

the truth of the matter is there is not an enormous amount of faith

in the U.S. Government; that people do not believe everything that

you say or I say or anyone else says. And when it comes to nuclear

power and the potential danger, clearly people are very, very concerned as to whether or not the U.S. Government is in fact protecting them.

As I understand it, earlier in August the NRC announced that

a substantial amount of site-specific security information would be

taken off of its Web site. Now, I can understand that we do not

want to tell al Qaeda all of the methods that we have to defend

nuclear power plants. But the bottom line is that when people, at

least in the past, could critique, could say it is not enough, now

they have virtually nothing. So if I’m living in Vernon, Vermont or

Brodova, Vermont, how do I know that the kind of security—I don’t

need to know every detail, people understand that. But what kind

of reassurance do people have that security is appropriate when

they now go to the Web site and they get far less information than

they used to? And as I understand it, you took that information off

kind of privately, without a lot of public discussion as to whether

that was a good idea.

Mr. REYES. Prior to September 11th and today, our strategic plan

has safety security and openness as one of the goals. And we have

learned since September 11th, through our feedback with the intelligence community, that there are people out there that want to do

us harm. And information that we openly share with everybody as

one of our strategic goals could be harm to the Nation. So what we

had to do is, we had to do some soul-searching and find out what

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information should we pull out of the public. And we took out information that could assist somebody in doing us harm.

What we are going to do is—the remaining of the information regarding the safety of the facility, all that information is still there.

What we are going to do is we are going to summarize that security information we have and present it in a summary fashion

without giving details that somebody can harm us.

Mr. SANDERS. We don’t have a lot of time. And I think everybody

understands that we do not want to give enemies information. But

on the other hand, I would ask you to keep in mind, given the fact

that people do not necessarily have a lot of confidence, that they

do want to know that they are being protected. They want the opportunity to critique when they feel that security is not appropriate. And I fear very much that is not the situation.

Now, I understand that there was several FOIA requests made

before this policy went into effect; in other words, regarding the nature of security. What does the NRC plan to do with those FOIA

requests?

Mr. REYES. Well, we are going to have to process them under the

new guidelines, because regardless of how you put the information

in the public, the details, we now know our intelligence colleagues

are telling us do not put detailed information out that can assist

people to do us harm.

Mr. SANDERS. Let me go to another area. And forgive me, we just

have to move fast because there’s not a lot of time. I’m picking up

at a point that Mr. Tierney raised a moment ago; and that is, NRC,

as I understand it, has repeatedly stated that they believe release

of radioactive fuel as a result of a terrorist attack on a spent fuel

pool is unlikely. NRC officials have made that point over and over

again, and they said that as recently as last week.

So what I want to know is why you think that way? Are you taking additional steps to fortify the many spent fuel pools around the

country, rather than simply dismissing the prospect of a breach of

security there?

Mr. REYES. We have done analysis of airplane crashes into the

spent fuel pools. Now, it’s been a limited number of details in

terms of which ones we have done that, and those are the conclusions you stated. We are now moving forward to doing further studies to make sure that we have done a thorough review in any one

of the layouts. The configuration of the pools are different in different plants, and so we are now continuing the analysis to make

sure that the results we have are representative of the total population.

Mr. SANDERS. Am I correct in remembering, though, that there

are some knowledgeable people who disagree with some of the conclusions that you have reached about the safety of those facilities

in terms of a plane attack?

Mr. REYES. There’s always people who disagree.

Mr. SANDERS. I’m not talking about fringy people; but I’m talking

about intelligent people.

Mr. REYES. Yeah, there’s always intelligent people that disagree

with us.

Mr. SANDERS. All right. What about the potential of an air attack? I understand that there is no longer a no-fly zone in effect

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over our Nation’s nuclear reactors. And my question is, why you

think that is good policy? And why does the NRC think it’s such

an insubstantial threat, especially in light of the fact that al Qaeda

clearly considered nuclear reactors an attractive target?

Mr. REYES. After September 11th, we met with the FAA and we

tried to get their insights and their determination on what should

be the airspace around nuclear power plants determined to be. The

FAA determination was that for nuclear power plants and other

critical infrastructure, that it was not advisable in their mind to

put no-fly zones. What they did determine was for nuclear power

plants to put what they call a notice to airmen, which basically is

a notice that goes to all pilots about limiting their flying around

these facilities. But we are just following, after the meeting with

the FAA, what they determined to be the most wise.

Mr. SANDERS. But do you think that makes sense? On the surface it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, given what we saw about

September 11 and the use of airplanes as missiles.

Mr. REYES. The rationale of the FAA was that there’s other critical infrastructure, just like nuclear power plants. And if they were

to put no-fly zones over all these facilities and the infrastructure,

you basically stop commerce because you have so many no-fly zones

across the national—chemical plants, pesticides.

Mr. SANDERS. Frankly, a nuclear power plant is different than

many other infrastructures and facilities. We don’t think we should

have universal no-fly zones, but I would suggest that maybe we

may want to do a little bit of thinking about that one.

Mr. REYES. And we met with the FAA and we tried to convey

that.

Mr. SANDERS. I mean, you met with the FAA. You are the experts on nuclear dangers; they are not. They have other interests

as well. And we need to rely on somebody to protect us.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Sanders, we need to move on.

Mr. SANDERS. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Chairman Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank you. We are going to have a second opportunity to question these witnesses. We do thank them, because

that’s a better way for them to make their arguments and for us

to understand the challenges.

The bottom line, it’s been 3 years since September 11th, and 2

years of it was the intelligence community giving us a postulated

threat. You have worked the last year on a design basis threat, and

now that’s coming into place. And what’s concerning me is there

appears to be 3 years before you really test at every facility, and

so it’s going to be like 6 years from September 11th.

I want to ask, are you aware of the memo, which was classified,

from the Deputy Secretary of Energy to DOE facilities strengthening the DBT and ordering safeguards beyond those called for by the

initial post-September 11 standard?

Mr. REYES. We work closely with DOE, and we know exactly

what their DBT is and where the directions are heading. We are

required by the Commission to brief them every 6 months on the

intelligence, and so they can reassess the DBT. We are scheduled

to do that November 16th of this year. At that time, we will brief

them not only with the intelligence information we have, but with

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all the DOE—DBT changes that they are considering or perhaps

they have implemented by the time we meet with the Commission.

Mr. SHAYS. When we met with DOE officials and we toured certain facilities, they came back to us and said that they were going

to strengthen their design basis threat. We have the postulated

threat up here, we have the Department of Energy with their DBT

here, and we see you lower down on the design basis threat, that

you don’t have as strong a standard as what we see happening for

the DOE facilities. That’s my reading of it. And I would like to

know, do you anticipate strengthening your design basis threat

based on——

Mr. REYES. We will share that information with the Commission.

It’s a policy decision by the commissioners whether to increase or

not increase the DBT. And, but we have a process to do that, and

November 16th is our next presentation to the Commission to consider that.

Mr. SHAYS. One of the biggest criticisms that GAO has is that

they say the NRC’s review of the plants, which are not available

to the general public for security reasons, has primarily been a

paper review and is not detailed enough for NRC to determine if

the plans would protect the facility against the threat presented in

the DBT. How do you respond to that?

Mr. REYES. The security plans are—they have, but at a pretty

high level. And what you see here, what you have at the station,

then, is what we call implementing procedures, the strategies of

how those individuals will respond to an attack, where are they located, how will the firing lines, etc., is an implementing procedure.

And the reason you want to have it that way is, let’s assume that

the legislative proposal that we highlighted to you gets approved

and we now can give them better weapons. Then the strategy at

the time may change.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, now that we don’t have the assault weapon

ban, are you now able to get—no, I’m serious. Are you prohibited

from giving them assault weapons?

Mr. REYES. Under State law—see, this, under the State law they

cannot have automatic weapons.

Mr. SHAYS. Under every State or in some States, or in every

State?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Some States have changed.

Mr. REYES. Recently. Very recently.

Mr. SHAYS. See, the logic of the assault weapon ban is that we

want the law enforcement folks and the security people to have

every advantage possible. We don’t want the bad folks to have

weapons that our people don’t have.

Mr. REYES. We agree.

Mr. SHAYS. I mean, the government’s got it screwed up here.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. The legislation that we proposed would allow

the security officers to use automatic weapons. Right now they are

using semi-automatic weapons.

Mr. SHAYS. I want you to use whatever the hell you need to do

the job. You know, our job in government is to make sure it’s never

a fair fight. We want our military people to always have the best.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I couldn’t agree with you more.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Would the gentleman yield on that for 1 second?

The problem is these are not military people and these aren’t public forces on that. The question I would have is, who is doing the

background check on these individuals? Who are they? How well

trained are they? And how confident can we be that they can be

entrusted with this kind of weaponry and are going to do the job

that we might normally expect of our own forces?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. The background checks on the security officers

is extremely aggressive. They are viewed to be in what’s called a

‘‘critical group’’ because of recognizing that if they were the insider,

what damage they would be able to cause. So there is a significant

background check and behavioral observation that takes place. The

vast majority of these individuals are prior military or law enforcement.

But the answer to your question, there is a very significant and

appropriate background check being done.

Mr. TIERNEY. By the NRC?

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Well, no. We work through the FBI. We pass

the information to various agencies that have a variety of data

bases that you are aware of, and those names are provided to those

data bases. We are a passthrough.

Mr. REYES. Similar to a clearance, the fingerprinting and review

will be done by the FBI. It’s not the licensee if that’s what you’re

asking.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me claim my time again. But I do think the gentleman is right on target. My biggest fear is the person who does

have the weapon on the inside. I think one individual like that

could practically accomplish whatever task they want. And so I

think that is a key factor the gentleman has identified.

The bottom line is you are going to be looking at whether to revise your new design basis threat. How long would that take,

though, if you then decided to do that?

Mr. REYES. Once we present that to the Commission, typically

within a few weeks they make a decision one way or the other. So

then if they were to make a change, we will have to implement it

through orders or some mechanism like that.

Mr. SHAYS. So how long would that take before it actually were

met in the field.

Mr. REYES. It depends on the size of the increase. If you are talking about the number of adversaries——

Mr. SHAYS. Just give me a sense. Are we talking a year more?

Mr. REYES. That should be in months we can issue the orders,

and then the implementation will take a little bit longer, depending

on the magnitude.

Mr. SHAYS. A little bit longer means what? A year?

Mr. REYES. My guess would be a year.

Mr. SHAYS. No, no. See, that isn’t a little bit longer. I don’t feel

like there is an intensity level at NRC, I honestly don’t. But we will

get to that later. I think we need to get to the next.

Ms. WATSON. Is this just a followup, or can it wait when they

come back to us?

Mr. TURNER. This panel is going to be returning after panel two.

Will you be able to stay for——

Ms. WATSON. Yeah. It was just pertinent to——

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Mr. SHAYS. I would be happy to.

Ms. WATSON. I was just going to say what is really bothering me

at this moment is that I represent a State that has a very porous

border, and there are people coming across the Mexican border into

the United States that are going to be able to buy automatic assault weapons in their corner sporting goods store because the ban

has evaporated. And I understand that there is a constant movement across our border, our southern border into the United

States, where these people can go in with fictitious names and

somebody else’s ID and pick up one of these assault weapons. This

will impact on you greatly, and so I just throw that out.

Mr. TURNER. Perhaps when they return that’s an issue they can

address at that time, if that’s OK.

Ms. WATSON. That’s fine. So just keep that in mind, my concern.

Mr. TURNER. What I understand is that panel one is going to remain while panel two testifies, and then return to us for additional

questions after we have heard the testimony of Mr. Jim Wells. So

we will excuse you at this point, with the understanding that you

are going to be remaining.

Mr. SHAYS. And we thank you for that. That will be helpful.

Mr. TURNER. And then we will call forward panel two, which is

Mr. Jim Wells, Director, National Resources and Environment Government Accountability Office, who will be accompanied by Mr.

Raymond H. Smith, Jr., Assistant Director, and Mr. Kenneth E.

Lightner, Jr., Senior Analyst.

Gentlemen, we do swear in our witnesses for the hearing. If you

would please stand and raise your right arm.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Please note for the record that the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

Mr. TURNER. We welcome you, Mr. Wells, and look forward to

your testimony.

STATEMENT OF JIM WELLS, DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES

AND ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY RAYMOND H. SMITH, JR. ASSISTANT

DIRECTOR; AND KENNETH E. LIGHTNER, JR., SENIOR ANALYST

Mr. WELLS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are pleased to be here

today to discuss NRC’s efforts to improve security at the Nation’s

104 commercial nuclear power plants. Today, it’s 3 years after the

Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks, and we are discussing what

NRC has done, where they are, and what’s left to do. To NRC’s

credit they responded immediately, advising the plants to go to the

highest levels of security, and they issued about 60 advisories and

orders.

As an auditor, I am going to stop here and let them take credit

for what they’ve done. They have, in fact, done a lot of things, and

there is no doubt that security has been enhanced. But what we

get paid to do as auditors is to bring forth concerns, and that’s

what I will do today.

While we applaud these efforts, the question is today: Has it

been enough? It will take several more years for NRC to make an

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independent determination that each plant has taken responsibile,

reasonable, and appropriate steps to provide protection.

The first step that NRC chose was to create new security plans

to implement their new DBT. While the original plan was envisioned to take 2 years, the commissioners decided to use an industry-developed template with yes-and-no answers to speed up the

process. And, Mr. Tierney, they did hire contractors to help review

the plans, and they wanted to get it done in 6 months.

Now, we have some concerns about how the NRC is doing this

first step. Not that this first step is wrong, it’s just the process they

chose to use.

First, NRC’s review has been rushed, and is largely a paper review, in our opinion. NRC reviewers are generally not visiting the

plants to obtain details. However, we have learned that they are

recently beginning to visit some of the plants and ask some questions relating to their plans. We understand they may have visited

about approximately 4 or 5 of the 65 facilities and the 100 plants

that are under consideration.

The plans themselves, and we have reviewed 12 of those plans,

do not detail defensive positions at the site, how the defenders

would be deployed to respond to that attack, or how long the deployment would take. In addition, NRC is not requesting the documents and the studies supporting the plan; so, in our opinion, as

a result, NRC today as they are reviewing these plans, even though

when they are approved they still will not have a lot of detailed

knowledge about the actual security at the individual facilities

prior to the approval of those plans.

Second, as it clearly has already been pointed out, it will take up

to 3 years for the NRC to test these plans through force-on-force

exercises at each facility. Moreover, NRC is considering action that

could potentially compromise the integrity of these exercises. And

I refer, as members of the subcommittee have already raised, the

consideration of using a private company, Wackenhut, that is a

company that the nuclear industry has selected, a company that

clearly has had problems in the past at Oak Ridge—and, I might

add, that NRC was doing oversight when these problems did happen—and a company that provides guards for about half the facilities to be tested. We understand Wackenhut is currently under

contract with about 50 percent of the nuclear facilities.

This relationship with the industry also raises questions about

the force’s independence. And that’s just a question that needs to

continue to be asked in terms of due diligence by the NRC in terms

of assuring that whatever contractor is used, that there is independence.

We note that the NRC’s DBT is similar to DOE, as you have

stated, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Shays. As you know, in April 2004,

DOE officials told this subcommittee that they would have to

rethink its threat assessment that they were using. DOE, we understand, completed that review last Tuesday and substantially increased their DBT.

If the NRC, when they consult with their commissioners, decides

to revisit or revise the DBT, NRC will clearly need more time. How

much time I think is a good question, that’s already been asked of

the NRC.

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Also, funding the cost of any additional protection that may be

required could also be a fairly significant issue for the industry.

NRC has already clearly publicly stated that the current DBT that

they are being required to defend against is the largest reasonable

threat against which a regulated private guard force should be expected to defend under existing law. Also, potential vulnerabilities

of additional assaults are on the horizon and currently are being

addressed outside of the existing DBT. Any change in any of these

approaches could place additional requirements on the plants. And

I speak here about the airborne nature over the nuclear power

plants.

In conclusion, can the public be assured that NRC’s efforts will

protect the plants against attack? Our answer to you today is not

yet. It will still be some time before NRC can provide the public

with full assurances that what has been done is enough. Some of

these enhancements are still being put in place, and they remain

to be tested.

Ms. Maloney and Congresswoman Watson, you have raised questions about NRC not agreeing to do some of our recommendations.

Yes, we still disagree. Maybe it’s an issue of substantial versus

minor. We’ve found, others have found, sleeping guards, guards

that have falsified records; access has been granted to individuals

in highly secured areas that had no business being there. We are

not sure that’s minor.

While NRC may initially disagree with some of the things that

we raise about trying to improve, it’s questions like this raised by

this subcommittee that may help the NRC in terms of seeing the

light and moving forward and making some substantial improvements.

We have a lot more audit work to do, Mr. Chairman. You have

asked us to do a lot of things, including an assessment of the DBT

and a lot of concern about the vulnerabilities, and is the current

DBT actually going to do anything to help protect the actual

vulnerabilities that exist. So we still owe you a report a year from

now or early next year, if we can finish it, on how NRC defines the

threat faced by the nuclear power plants. We believe, based on

what we have seen today—understanding that we are still preliminarily still doing our audit, we have not completed our work, and,

in fairness to the NRC, have not given them an opportunity to comment or react to what we have seen today—that it’s important that

NRC act quickly and take a strong leadership role in establishing

a worthy adversary team for these upcoming exercises.

I can’t overemphasize how important these exercises are to test

what’s being put in place. These improvements are expensive, and

we want to make sure that they are actually doing what they are

intended to do and can in fact defend the plants. Perhaps NRC

needs to consider establishing priorities for the facilities to be tested.

Quite frankly, we have seen a common general approach that

they take. They tend to look at plants in general, generically. But

clearly when you come to vulnerabilities and you come to assessment of threats, you need to look much more closely and individually at plants and perhaps prioritize where you put your attention

first. They need to carefully analyze test results if they detect any

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shortcomings in the facility’s security, and, perhaps most importantly, be willing to require additional security improvements as

warranted or as discovered.

Mr. Chairman, this testimony, or the statement, provides our

preliminary reviews. We’ll be happy to respond to any questions

you may have. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Wells.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wells follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. One of the statements in your written testimony, it

says NRC has already stated that the current design basis threat

is the largest reasonable threat against which a regulated private

guard force should be expected to defend under existing law.

Now, we have been looking at, in addition to power plants, nuclear weapons facilities, and it has seemed to me that perhaps we

are going about this backward. The design basis threats are being

defined as a result of the resources that are available rather than

the actual threat that exists. The statement that you have here in

your testimony seems to indicate that the design basis threat is not

a full evaluation of what the actual attack method or threat could

be to a nuclear power plant, but is instead a review of what resources they have and what maximum capability that they would

have to respond. Could you speak about that for a moment?

Mr. WELLS. Yes, sir. NRC in their own words have characterized

their responsibility as a regulator which presents challenges, and

they have used the word ‘‘balance.’’ They have a lot of concern for

balance in terms of what should be required, what can be regulated. And they also have a responsibility to maintain a viable industry to deliver electricity to this country. Clearly, that involves

choices and decisions.

Our observation, having conducted several audits and continuing

with our work, is that the NRC, as a regulator, has placed a lot

of faith in what the licensees tell them. They also have to provide

some trust level to the licensee. We have seen examples in doing

our Davis-Besse work where that may not have been as valid as

they should have been.

So I think the question being asked today and the question that

continually needs to be asked: What do you expect of the regulator?

Mr. TURNER. The paragraph that I’m referring to goes on to say

that, also, certain potential vulnerabilities such as airborne assaults are currently being addressed outside of the DBT.

Now, what it has seemed to me in reviewing the materials, that

there is certainly—the responsibility for it is assigned outside of

the design basis threat, but I’m not confident that it’s currently

being really addressed. Do you see any efforts that, outside the design basis threat, that there is coordination, that there is sufficient

effort to actually respond to the threats that are beyond the box

that they are currently dealing with with the design basis threat

of the private guard force?

Mr. WELLS. Congressman Turner, NRC has given us access to

the design basis threat. We are well aware of what the design basis

threat, what is contained in the design basis threat. We are dealing

with safeguarded security information that prevents me from actually discussing in terms of what is actually in the plan or not in

the plan. We have asked them what they are doing in terms of considering airspace over the nuclear power plants. They have responded to us that they have contracted for, paid for, and have the

results of a fairly significant study that they have done. They indicate it’s classified. I cannot get into that today.

Mr. TURNER. I’m not asking about any information for you to disclose. I’m asking about the issue of coordination. It seems to me

that the initial statement that we have in your written testimony

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is the design basis threat is a box that is based upon a private

guard force and that they are not necessarily going beyond that.

Then the next statement in the testimony is that with respect to

airborne assaults and certainly, I would think, other issues that go

outside of that box and what the private guard force would be able

to do, which would require coordination with the DOD, we have

also discussed NORTHCOM and NORAD. Do you see any evidence

that coordination is effectively occurring, or is it just, as you relate,

to other reviews, just a paper coordination going on?

Mr. WELLS. Let me respond that, as I said earlier, we are still

conducting our work, we are still asking questions. I don’t have a

conclusion or a reaction for you. Factually, we are aware—as NRC

stated this morning, they are talking to the FAA. We are aware

that the nuclear industry themselves is on public record saying

that is a defense that they don’t believe is their responsibility, that

is a national responsibility.

So we will continue looking at and assessing the requirements

that are in the DBT or not in the DBT. That is something we

haven’t done yet.

Mr. TURNER. One real quick followup question. In the testimony

that we heard before, it was dismissed as to whether or not aircraft

attacking these facilities are of any danger. That doesn’t seem reasonable to me. What is your opinion of that?

Mr. WELLS. We had several words in our statement that was

sent to the NRC for classification purposes, and those sentences

and words were removed from the statement because of the security concern. They do have information on the study that they have

conducted.

Mr. TURNER. It is an area that you are concerned with then also?

Mr. WELLS. Absolutely. We will continue our assessment of the

vulnerability versus the design basis threat that’s being put up

against it.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Wells.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentleman yield for a second?

Mr. KUCINICH. Sure.

Mr. SHAYS. This is the statement you were going to give today?

Mr. WELLS. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Were there a lot of things taken out of your statement?

Mr. WELLS. No, there was not. There was a few word adjustments. We sent the entire statement, from my opening statement

to the end of my statement, for classification review because we

have a public obligation——

Mr. SHAYS. I think that makes sense. That’s not the issue. I just

was curious if there was just one area.

Mr. WELLS. The area involved the airborne attack issue.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you.

Mr. Wells, as Secretary of Energy, Secretary Abraham recently

announced the formation of an elite specialized military-type team

that would be used to test security at DOE facilities. Do you believe the NRC should follow suit and turn this function from what

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you have described as sleeping intoxicated guards into a government function?

Mr. WELLS. Unfortunately, I haven’t done the audit work to support a conclusion to give you a straight answer. I know that’s something that this chairman has asked us to continue to do and report

on the end of this year, and we are continuing.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, you have done the audit work on one part

of the equation.

Mr. WELLS. Yes, we have, but not on the design basis threat. But

clearly we are aware that there are different types of facilities.

There is nuclear material. We are aware that the DOE has different classifications of types of material and different guard force

versus private guard force. There are different issues between the

agencies that could account for some differences between what’s required. We just don’t know how valid that fact is until we actually

have a chance to look at it.

Mr. KUCINICH. I want to go over some territory here. You stated

in your testimony that the October 2004 deadline for implementing

the DBT is on schedule, but that this is based only on a paper review, and that the NRC cannot determine if the plans would actually protect the facility against the threat presented in the DBT.

Mr. WELLS. That’s correct, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. Is that correct?

Mr. WELLS. That’s correct. We know that they are 85 percent

complete with approving those or looking at those plants. But even

when they are 100 percent approved, we still take our position that

they only got what they got.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, so then should the NRC be more involved

in the oversight over the DBT implementation process?

Mr. WELLS. Absolutely. They have acknowledged to us that this

is a first step, and they have step two and step three and step four.

We just know it’s going to take additional time before they can

reach that assurance to the public that everything that has been

put in place will work.

Mr. KUCINICH. And what kind of improvements has GAO recommended to be implemented in the NRC inspection program, and,

why if they have, has the NRC resisted in making those changes?

Mr. LIGHTNER. There are two open points from our report from

last September that NRC has not taken action on. I believe they

have been discussed earlier. But the one has to do with followup

on security violations that were noted. Particularly we’re concerned

with something called noncited violations which are followed up by

NRC only as part of a sampling process. And as stated earlier, I

believe our difference with them is over what is significant and

what isn’t.

NRC cites these as noncited violations primarily because they

have occurred less than two times in the prior year. I believe our

concern is that even if they occur once, and they are significant,

such as falsifying records related to guards’ checkpoints or a sleeping guard, that they are significant and should be followed up on

in every case to make sure that this doesn’t happen in the future.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you then challenge the underlying assumption

which the NRC has about what’s significant?

Mr. WELLS. That’s correct.

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Mr. KUCINICH. And let’s go a little bit deeper into this. Are you

saying that their assumptions contain within them potential

threats to the security of nuclear power plants?

Mr. WELLS. Noncited violations, if a guard is sleeping or unauthorized individuals are allowed access in secured areas, falls directly in security. I don’t know how else to say that.

Mr. KUCINICH. So is that a yes?

Mr. WELLS. It certainly raises concern. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. I’m going to quote from some information in your

report, and you can tell me if it’s accurate or not. And it says, for

example, the plans do not detail defensive positions at this site,

how the defenders would deploy to respond to an attack, or how

long the deployment would take. In addition, NRC is not requesting and the facilities are generally not submitting for review the

documents and studies supporting the draft security plans.

Can you comment on that?

Mr. WELLS. The best way to comment would be to describe a

plan; a plan is approximately 150 pages long for a single plant; 80

to 85 percent of the information is a template in which the licensee

responds and checks a box yes or no.

An example is the requirement that lighting be sufficient so that

guards can see someone at night? The licensee would respond, yes,

we have lighting.

I know I’m oversimplifying this a little bit, but I’m giving you the

implication of the template nature of the plan that’s developed. Basically, what the licensee is doing is certifying to or committing to

the NRC that, when they get out there to look, with all the details,

they will find that the licensee is committing that they will have

something in place that will meet all the template requirements

that NRC is imposing.

That’s the nature of the plan that we’ve looked at. It does not

describe where the guard tower is, the location of the guard tower.

It does not describe that. It just says we have guard towers.

Ms. WATSON. Yeah, but they might be in New York City, you

know. I’m not comfortable with where we are now, and I definitely

am not comfortable with my constituents’ security. And within the

State we do have nuclear power plants.

Are you, as an agency that goes in and accounts for resources

and so on, satisfied that we are where we need to be at this time,

this point in time?

Mr. WELLS. In regard to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?

Ms. WATSON. Yes.

Mr. WELLS. We have issued two reports. We are going on our

third report. And in each of those reports we have surfaced concerns and made recommendations that we suggest could improve

government operations and regulatory issues with the NRC. So we

are doing what we can to raise these issues and to recommend

fixes.

Ms. WATSON. But are you satisfied with where the NRC is? This

is September 2004. Are you satisfied, September 2004, that we are

where we should be?

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Mr. WELLS. NRC needs to be given a lot of credit. They have

done a lot of things as quickly as they possibly can under their requirements. I have to be careful in answering that personally, I

would always like things to be done faster. And I agree with the

chairman to say that 14 months to design the DBT, allowing another year to put it in place, seems like an awful long time. But

we are dealing with a regulatory agency that has public concerns;

they are facing lawsuits about whether they do rulemaking, whether they do orders.

I understand the challenge they have. Personally, I would hope

that the intensity level, as the chairman referred to, perhaps could

be moved forward. I encourage the NRC to ask the DOE why they

were able to do a revision to their DBT so quickly. And in lessons

learned, if there is something DOE did that the NRC could use, I

would suggest that they pay attention and try that.

Ms. WATSON. And let me just say that I heard the word ‘‘resources,’’ but I didn’t hear the elaboration. Are they lacking the resources to work in a more speedy fashion?

Mr. WELLS. Clearly, the NRC has gotten a mandate and a mission to be a regulatory agency that is a commission that’s funded

by the industry. So there has always been this fine line between,

we have an obligation to require our regulators to regulate an industry and how to go about doing that. There has always been resource constraints and issues involved with the NRC in terms of

how much resources they have to effectively get the job one. And

it’s a very tough balance that they face.

Ms. WATSON. See, that kind of gives us a hint as to what we as

policymakers, hello, who have the oversight, should be doing. And

we, working with industries, nongovernmental, you know, ought to

realize that they are not going to move unless they have the resources necessary.

So thank you for your statement. And I will yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

I think you are being very fair to the NRC. I mean, you said they

responded quickly and decisively to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and multiple steps to enhance security at commercial

and nuclear plants. It gives, to me, more credibility when you point

out some of what they aren’t doing.

I do think there is some value in looking at parallels between

what DOE is doing. What I’m getting a feeling of—and I would love

you to explain this concept of orders versus rulemaking. The Secretary of Energy can basically say, damn it, just do it. And, you

know, admittedly bureaucracies take a while, but doesn’t the NRC

have the capability to say let’s do it? No more 2 years, no more

whatever, just get the job done and do it quickly. Do they not have

that capability?

Mr. WELLS. Mr. Chairman, I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that

they do have wide discretion in orders that they can issue,

advisories that they can issue. There is a line between what’s voluntary implementation by the industry and what’s required of the

industry. However, I do know that they are facing several lawsuits

challenging the right to issue just-do-it orders.

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Mr. SHAYS. By these companies?

Mr. WELLS. By public interest groups.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, by public interest groups that are unhappy that

they are not moving quickly. Are the companies taking challenges

to the——

Mr. WELLS. I’m not sure who the——

Mr. SHAYS. Well, I mean, with all due respect, I mean, I might

be one of those people going after the NRC as well if they are not

moving quickly. I mean, we are really talking 6 years from September 11th to when the design basis threat is going to be shown at

least in one experience at each plant. So your basic point to us is

that this is pretty much a paper review today. Do you stand by

that?

Mr. WELLS. I do. Step one has been a paper review.

Mr. SHAYS. I mean, there isn’t any real-life stuff going on to

make sure it’s happening yet.

Mr. WELLS. We have been recently made aware that they visited

four or five places to ask some questions about what was actually

in the document.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, we have 65 places they could visit, and they

have gone to four or five places?

Mr. WELLS. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. So, I mean, we are not even talking about the efforts

to break the integrity of the plant and those exercises; we are just

talking the NRC just going there and checking it out firsthand.

Mr. WELLS. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. OK. So they are going to rely on the forceon-force, but they haven’t started that yet.

Now, what I think is pretty stunning is your statement on page

13, where you talk about instances of security guards sleeping on

duty and security officers falsifying logs to show that it’s been

checked—had checked vital areas and barriers when he was actually in a part of the plant, for example—were treated as non-cited

violations. The whole issue of non-cited violations that was raised

by my colleague, who gets to decide whether they are noncited violations?

Mr. WELLS. The NRC.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, what would be the logic for making them

noncited? Tell me the logic. What would be their argument?

Mr. LIGHTNER. In a NRC letter responding to our last report,

they wrote to us, ‘‘the use of noncited violation contributes to an

environment that fosters licensee’s self-identification and correction

of problems, an important organizational behavior that NRC encourages.’’

It’s our understanding that this is the philosophy that they have

and that they want the licensee to identify and correct the problems that——

Mr. SHAYS. So you think if they make them cited, they won’t do

it? They won’t share it? I’m missing the logic.

Mr. LIGHTNER. I believe it’s a difference in philosophy between

maybe NRC and the GAO.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, we’ll have them explain the philosophy.

Mr. LIGHTNER. Based on these statements and their response to

our report, I believe they believe that it’s the responsibility of the

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licensee—they would like the licensee to find as many problems as

they can and correct them. And we wouldn’t disagree that’s a good

thing for them to be the people onsite to find and correct them.

Mr. SHAYS. So what I’m reading in that is if they cite them, they

will be less inclined to share them and disclose them?

Mr. LIGHTNER. No, I don’t think so. I think they just want them

to be aware of the problems and correct them. Our view is that’s

fine, except we believe a regulator should be aware of what the

problems are and be right on top of the correction and followup on

those to make sure they do the job.

Mr. SHAYS. So we basically have a grade; it’s either cited or noncited. It’s either a pass/fail? I don’t mean pass/fail, I mean, a cited

violation evidently is significant.

Mr. WELLS. It is significant, and they would do followup and they

would verify in fact that it’s been corrected. If it’s a noncited violation, they would trust and have faith that the contractor has said

I fixed it, and then the NRC would not necessarily do a followup

to verify. They may do some sampling a year so later to see if it

was.

Mr. SHAYS. Is that because the commercial enterprise was the

one to find the——

Mr. WELLS. It could go either way. The NRC could find it or the

licensee could find it, and it could both be noncited. Part of it has

to do with NRC’s regulatory philosophy that they are to provide

oversight, not necessarily to be there on a day-in/day-out basis

critiquing the operation of the nuclear power plant. There is a reliance on the operators to do a good job and fix things as they find

them.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. Are they prevented if it’s a noncited violation

from verifying that it’s been fixed?

Mr. WELLS. They are not prevented. If it happened to fall in their

sample and they went out and looked and found that it was not

corrected, I assume that there would be consequences to the licensee for not fixing it, or to the licensee who might have said,

yeah, we did fix it, but they didn’t.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, it seems to me, as you said, this classification

tends to minimize the seriousness of the problem, which it certainly does. Non-cited violations do not require a written response

from the licensee and do not require NRC inspectors to verify that

the problem has been corrected.

Mr. WELLS. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. But it’s really two parts. They don’t even have to do

a written response.

Mr. WELLS. No. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. I find that very surprising. I mean, really surprising.

The NRC used non-cited violations extensively for serious problems, thereby allowing the licensee to correct the problem on their

own without NRC verification of the correction.

So your point to us, which I think is serious, is that these are

serious violations there also. And you stand by that?

Mr. WELLS. I do.

Mr. SHAYS. Consequently, NRC may not be fully aware of the

quality of security at a site, and the lack of followup and verificaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:00 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98358.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion reduces assurances that needed improvements have been

made.

I just would totally accept that as logical.

Let me just ask you, could someone find out how much time I

have for the vote? Just check the TV.

That tells me that licensees are commercial enterprises,correct?

And I have nothing against commercial enterprise. I happen to believe in it. That’s one reason I am a Republican.

Mr. WELLS. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. But what I don’t quite understand—am I to infer

that they, in a sense, compete, that they view themselves as competitors and not sharing information? I mean, lessons learned is

what I deeply care about. Are they sharing information with their

competitors about screw-ups they have done in their own plants?

Mr. WELLS. That would be an excellent question to ask the industry folks that are on the third panel. We at GAO haven’t done

any specific work to look at sharing of information, but there is a

lot of proprietary information out there. No question about it.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Well, I believe you have done a helpful job. I

sense that you are using your words in a measured way, which

makes me think that we need to pay more attention to them than

we may be. Is there anything you want to put on the record? Is

there anything that we should have asked that we didn’t that you

wish we had asked?

Mr. WELLS. I think the continuing oversight by the Congress of

the Nuclear Regulatory Agency is something that is important.

They have a very important responsibility that’s greatly increased

since September 11, 2001, and I think the public deserves a lot

more openness about where we are and what’s happening. And I

understand the security needs, but I also, you know, am sensitive

to even as auditors going into an agency, a regulatory agency like

the NRC, that sometimes I don’t feel like we are getting as much

cooperation in terms of trying to improve government operations as

opposed to only trying to minimize how they answer our questions.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Mr. WELLS. So I would hope that we and the future Commissioners of the NRC can work something out from an operating procedure because we are in this together to try to find out a better

way to regulate a commercial nuclear industry that doesn’t share

a lot of concern about what may happen in the future from terrorist attacks. So we are there to help, and I am looking forward to

that improved operation and working relationship.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, I think that you have earned that right to expect that.

Thank you.

Mr. WELLS. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. That is a very measured report. I appreciate that.

I guess I am the chairman now for a second. I would just say to

our first panel, you will be the first that we will call back as soon

as we get back from voting. You really have about 20 minutes, if

anybody wants to go downstairs and get something to eat. I think

that it will probably have three more votes. I don’t think we will

keep you here that long. So I thank you all very much.

We stand in recess.

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[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. We are back to order.

Both witnesses have been sworn in, and we sincerely appreciate

you all waiting.

We do have some questions we would like to ask you based on

the GAO’s report. I would say to you that in my judgment, when

you get into these issues of nuclear security and so on, you can

really make things pretty sensationalized because the consequences

can be quite significant. I view the GAO as someone who took no

cheap shots, just came out with some concerns. I would like you to

address them.

I need to have you explain to me, if you would, Mr. Reyes, why

we are not seeing cited complaints and a written response to them

as discussed in the report by the GAO.

Mr. REYES. The NRC requirements on violations, whether they

are safety or security, is a graded approach.

Mr. SHAYS. Are what? I’m sorry.

Mr. REYES. Graded approach. In other words, for more significant violations, the licensee is required to provide an original response if appropriate.

For the noncited violations, which are the violations of lesser significance, we do not require them to send us a document. What we

do require them is to put in their corrective action program. They

have a program that is required by their quality assurance program to note any deviation or any violation of any requirement and

to track the corrective action into full implementation.

Now, for significant violations, we do follow with NRC inspectors

to confirm that all of those actions were taken and that they are

effective. For the minor significant violations—we call them

noncited violations—we do it on a sampling process.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t know what’s being done.

See, I think there’s a misconception that for those violations that

we don’t do a complete detailed followup we don’t know what’s been

done. See, at every power plant in the country, the NRC has an office and has inspectors that live in the community and work there

every day and interface with all of the employees at that station.

So we do know, in general terms, what those that we didn’t sample, the corrective actions were and what is being done. But we

didn’t send any specialist. We call them——

Mr. SHAYS. I should have known that, but you are saying you actually have someone onsite?

Mr. REYES. We have more—there are two NRC inspectors at

each fuel—nuclear power plant and the field officers NRC——

Mr. SHAYS. I knew they were there. I didn’t know they were specific onsite.

Mr. REYES [continuing]. Physically onsite on the facility. They

live on the community. They have unfettered access to any part of

the nuclear power plant.

Mr. SHAYS. So they don’t have any operational responsibility.

They can just walk wherever the hell they want.

Mr. REYES. Exactly right. At any time of day and night.

Mr. SHAYS. That sounds like an interesting job.

Mr. REYES. I used to be one when I earned an honest living, and

I loved it.

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Mr. SHAYS. It doesn’t sound like an honest living.

Mr. REYES. It was. It was protecting public health and safety.

But, at the same time, you have hands on and the real activity that

was going on in a facility.

Mr. SHAYS. How do you avoid not developing such a personal relationship that you kind of close your eyes?

Mr. REYES. Very good question. We have a policy that we require

them—first of all, there be two of. And the maximum time they can

stay at one facility is 7 years, and we force them to rotate from one

facility to another.

Then we have requirements from the supervisors from the regional offices to visit them at least quarterly to make sure there

is—we call them objectivity reviews to make sure that in fact they

are not being either unfair one way or the other. You can go either

way.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. It is a strange terminology to call it minor significant violation, which is what you said. It sounds like you have

three gradations here. But if it’s significant, why is it minor? And

if it is minor, why is it significant?

Mr. REYES. Maybe the terms are confusing. What we do, this

panel that we referred to earlier, which is representative from all

of the field offices and the headquarters program office, has guidelines in terms of the significance of the violation, and we—one of

the categories, the lowest category, is called noncited violations,

and I believe that’s the one that GAO was referring to.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. REYES. That we don’t specifically follow through by sending

inspectors to check every one of them. We do it in a sample approach.

Mr. SHAYS. Is someone who is falsifying papers, is that a significant violation?

Mr. REYES. I am going to have to defer——

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, talk to me a little bit about how you decide what

is a cite, what isn’t——

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Good question.

Mr. SHAYS [continuing]. And who decides.

Mr. REYES. We decide.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. It comes back to the panel that we talked

about.

Mr. REYES. NRC panel.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. NRC panel made up of representatives from

each region and from our headquarters in Rockville. And what we

look at, is it an isolated case or does it permeate the organization?

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. That’s one of those factors that can help determine the significance of the item. How long has this been going on?

Is this the first time it’s been done? Or through our investigations—we have investigators. When we have a concern that potentially could be problematic in nature, we could use our investigators to come out and get additional information.

But the length of duration, what could have happened with the

fact that this record of this door was not checked. If the door is

alarmed and this was a belt and suspenders and the individual

didn’t check the door, but there is no reason to suspect the door all

106

of a sudden isn’t working properly, does it work well afterward and

before? And you check it afterwards, and it is still working, and it

doesn’t have a history of problems, a reasonable person could likely

say that door probably would have worked, the belt and suspenders

weren’t there, but the door was still secure, as was the vital—those

types of dialogs back and forth weighing the significance of this

item is what this panel does.

A comment I didn’t make in our earlier session of this is there

was dialog that you had with GAO. Well, maybe this is a difference

of opinion between what is a minor violation——

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN [continuing]. And what significance is.

One of the things we are planning on looking at, because we

have a review going on of what we call our significance determination process, which really is the hierarchy document, and we are

piloting that activity right now. And it’s possible—I don’t know

what the results will be, but it’s possible that we may change some

of our thoughts with regard to where that break point is between

something being minor and something being more significant.

That’s an activity that we started in the July timeframe.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me yield such time as he may consume—not

yield, let me give him the floor.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would almost like to ask you a broad question. I would say that

to the end I am still a little concerned with your force-on-force aspect and the finding that Wackenhut had knowledge that stand-by

personnel had been used in test performances in the past. It seems

that people were sort of trailing other people just to get the idea

of where they might go and some of the information that would

have been held inside and was not. Tell me why we shouldn’t be

concerned about that?

Mr. REYES. Let me give you the three major points; and then, if

you need more details, I know Mr. Zimmerman has a lot of details.

But I think you need to remember, and I made that point earlier,

DOE operates and regulates itself. In the case of the nuclear industry, commercial nuclear industry, we are the ones who do the oversight for those facilities. So when you bring the adversaries to do

the force on force in this case you are talking about—is employees

of this Wackenhut corporation. We, the NRC, review that in fact

those individuals did the right thing. So we are the ones who are

accepting their credentials and are they ready to do the test. We,

the NRC, determine what the venue is that will be. And we are

there in large numbers in the preparation and conduct of the test,

and—as it is the NRC who decides whether the performance was

acceptable or not.

Mr. TIERNEY. But still, apparently, someone still got the headsup of how it was going to be done, what the attack would look like

and be prepared for it.

Mr. REYES. But that is the Department of Energy example from

the IG findings, and we are aware of those IG findings, and we

have already trained our inspectors to look for those kinds of

issues.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I think in the earlier session we talked about

what we do every 3 years, where we will be with the adversary——

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Mr. TIERNEY. Check that.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I will get back to you. Check the miles front

and afterwards and all the things we do, the sensitivity we have

toward it. Then we have the annual exercise that the licensee does,

and I believe that we plan on observing those, but I want to make

that distinction between those two different types.

The understanding that I have been given is at Y–12 it was not

the DOE standard force on force where this occurred. It wasn’t like

our 3-year exercise. It was the off-year activity being done by the

site, so that it had less oversight, less controls. It doesn’t make it

right, doesn’t make it right. But I wanted to clarify for you that if

in your mind you are looking at it and saying that equates to the

NRC’s 3-year force on force, I am trying to clarify that is not

the——

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. I understand that. That we don’t do those for every

3 years leads me to believe we ought to be concerned less about the

annual periodic checks, that those don’t occur either.

I am real concerned about these private enterprises policing

themselves even if they aren’t monitored by the NRC. It is like the

fox watching the chicken coop here. I have a real problem with

them doing the training and them deciding what the hours are

going to be and them deciding what the force on force is going to

be, even if they have your supervision——

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. They don’t decide.

Mr. TIERNEY [continuing]. Your decisionmaking. There are examples of that information getting out and not being done right, and

it is troublesome.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I understand the perception. They are not deciding anything. They are not deciding what path they are going

to take. This is scripted by the NRC saying this is the path that

you are going to take. The people doing it are our contractors.

Mr. TIERNEY. That’s every 3 years.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Every 3 years.

Mr. TIERNEY. The annual ones—which I would imagine are just

as important—that is not the case.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. And the benefit of having a contract organization such as Wackenhut organization in place is that if I am one

of the individuals who was selected to be on the composite adversary force I am going to learn an awful lot. Now I am going to take

it back to my site and enhance the performance of those annual exercises, and I am going to bring back best practices associated with

where I have been.

Mr. TIERNEY. I am not sure I buy that, Mr. Zimmerman. But,

you know, I hear what you are saying, and I respect your opinion

on that. But I am not sure I buy it.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Let me add one in closure——

Mr. TIERNEY. Sure.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN [continuing]. That will make you feel a little bit

better. If it turns out the NRC is not satisfied with the performance of this group, we are going to do it ourselves. The Commission

has told us that.

Mr. TIERNEY. But that is every 3 years.

Mr. REYES. He means the whole concept. The Commission is trying this approach right now. He is talking about the whole concept

of Wackenhut supplying the adversaries. The Commission hasn’t

ruled out that we will have this—that this is the only way to go.

We are doing this. The Commission can change their mind and say,

no, we are going to do it differently.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. The first use of this composite adversary force

is occurring this week. This week is the first time it will be used

in force on force. It will be on strength. If it doesn’t meet our standards, then they will hear about it and the industry will hear about

it. If there is the need for course corrections, they will be made.

Mr. TIERNEY. I have serious concerns on that. I would be interested if you would report to this committee what you find after that

goes on and give us some detail on that.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I will do that.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. I would greatly appreciate that. That is one of the

overriding concerns that I have, is that we are really not in charge

of every aspect of who is in there providing security.

I don’t want to use up too much of the time here.

Mr. SHAYS. I would just have a question—the gentleman yields

the question.

Mr. TIERNEY. Now you have heard other people testifying here

this morning. What do you think are the serious concerns that they

raised and what is your response to those most serious concerns?

Mr. REYES. GAO audits are not complete, and they haven’t visited the facilities. We are concerned that you are giving the impression that all they do is a paper review. We tried to bring some pictures.

Mr. TIERNEY. Correct me if I am wrong. You haven’t visited all

the facilities either?

Mr. SHAYS. I have to show you the pictures. The pictures to me

were confusing.

Mr. REYES. OK. We cannot show you——

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t understand why I should be impressed with

someone who has a gun and a helmet on. Why would I feel good

about this?

Mr. REYES. The physical barrier?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Mr. REYES. See the physical barrier, the pop-up barrier?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Mr. REYES. When GAO says that all that is going on is paper—

we are trying to say there are physical changes at these facilities

in the field. Now we couldn’t bring pictures of everything.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Tell me this——

Mr. TIERNEY. I think the concern was that you determined that

those physical things were through a paper review in all but about

four to six instances.

Mr. SHAYS. And, again, if the gentleman would yield just for a

second. So this is the barrier.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. A barrier.

Mr. REYES. Yes. A pop-up barrier.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. It rolls down and pops up.

Mr. SHAYS. All right. I am not impressed.

Mr. REYES. But that is not a paper issue. I mean, there are physical barriers there.

Mr. SHAYS. What does this tell me?

Mr. REYES. You say that—bullet resistance.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Up. There you go.

Mr. REYES. That is a strategic point to show the adversary—I

can’t go into details but made out of bulletproof——

Mr. SHAYS. It is totally bulletproof.

Mr. REYES. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. That is helpful. I didn’t know that.

Now this one.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Same thing.

Mr. REYES. Same thing. That is another strategic point. And we

can’t tell you how many officers.

Mr. SHAYS. What brings down something like this? It would have

to be a grenade launch or a rocket?

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Mr. REYES. You would have to have a sizable weapon.

Mr. SHAY. OK.

Mr. REYES. So our only point was trying to make that there are

physical changes there. We couldn’t bring you all the pictures. We

really invite the committee or any of the staff on the committee to

go and visit. Because in this forum we can’t go into the details. But

it’s more than paper. We were surprised that they are characterizing it as that.

Mr. SHAYS. Is the gentleman also going to get into the issue, I

hope?

Mr. TIERNEY. Just jump in.

Mr. SHAYS. No, I just wonder if you were going to pursue your

questioning on the quality of the people.

Mr. TIERNEY. I don’t know if you are going to bring that up or

not. I am concerned and interested—I don’t know whether I am the

only one concerned about the quality of the people that are actually

in there as security personnel. You know, the background check.

Who is going the background check? How in depth it is. Who does

their training? Who observes the performance on the job? Who determines whether or not they are properly proficient in weapons?

Who determines that they are showing up on time, doctoring

records, doing all those things?

Mr. REYES. The background checks are all done by the Feds. In

other words, the FBI processes the fingerprints.

Mr. TIERNEY. So anytime Wackenhut or anybody else wants to

hire somebody they have to check them through the FBI?

Mr. REYES. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. The psychological test is done by

a contractor to the facility, but it’s a doctor with his own credentials to go through that.

Now we are the ultimate who reviews that. Our inspection is

called access controls. Contrary to what you heard here from GAO,

we conduct those all the time and they are being conducted as we

speak. So we are there where the rubber meets the road doing

those inspections.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Background checks are more rigorous and more

frequent than it is for other individuals that have vital area access

because of the fact that these individuals are armed.

Mr. REYES. Yes, the armed individuals receive a more thorough

review.

Mr. TIERNEY. Do you have any of the concerns raised by the Department of Energy or the GAO?

Mr. REYES. The recommendations, you mean?

Mr. TIERNEY. Yes.

Mr. REYES. We take them seriously. We have endorsed some of

them. We have implemented some of them. Others we are still considering. We just haven’t gotten to them and haven’t ruled them

out.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

I would just like to ask, and do this real quick because I want

to get to the next panel, but I think you have been very responsive.

I don’t get a sense there are consequences if bad things happen. So

make me feel good about consequences.

First off, anyone who was inebriate, drunk, they are fired, right?

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Mr. REYES. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. And then there is the question as to how that

would have happened. So you don’t want a written explanation

from—why wouldn’t there be at least a written explanation?

Mr. REYES. There is an aside. We know that the individual was

fired. Typically, it was by the supervisor observation program. The

supervisors of these individuals are trained to observe behavior. So

the way it is found out is typically we have a report that a supervisor requests it for cause, testing of an individual.

We know an individual is no longer aware, and we are aware of

the corrective actions we are taking over all of the facility. We may

not send an inspector just to review that in detail. Our inspectors

onsite are aware that this individual is not coming back, and they

are in discussion with the other security guards, and that’s why we

have the inspector at the plant who has access to all 1,000 employees. They know and they ask, do you know what happened, and

make sure that word gets out that is not tolerated. We do have indirect means to confirming it. I think there is a misnomer on——

Mr. SHAYS. Wait. If you have people onsite, it seems to me you

are able to check it the next day. That’s why I am beginning to

think, if you have people onsite, they are aware of the citations,

correct?

Mr. REYES. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Don’t they write you a note and say this has been

corrected?

Mr. REYES. If we go and follow it, they do. But we have a very

prescribed inspection program that includes safety and security.

And we want them to go in the control room and we want them

to check the safety pumps. It is just a matter of make sure you are

putting your resources where the highest safety and significance

matter is.

Mr. SHAYS. I would think that the people onsite would be asked

to verify any citation, every criticism in the plant. I would think

that’s what they need to do. And I would think they need to write

a report on everyone. I mean, it just seems like a no-brainer. They

are there.

Mr. REYES. They are busy. And they write a report. And the

most significant ones, they are aware of the other ones.

Mr. SHAYS. How difficult is it to followup on a complaint and

check it out? They could do it in an hour or two, couldn’t they?

Mr. REYES. Well, it typically takes more than that.

Mr. SHAYS. Better they do it than no one do it.

Mr. REYES. But we do it, sir, on a sample basis. We do.

Mr. SHAYS. I am going to have that explained to me later. I am

impressed you have people onsite. I am not impressed that they are

not following up on cited complaints or noncited complaints.

Anything else you want to put on the record that you would like

to—yes.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I just want to make a comment—I guess maybe

two comments, maybe one on legislation. But the comment I want

to make is that I got the sense from reviewing the hearing from

last year and from sitting here today that a number of the members of the committee have a concern that we don’t worry enough,

that we are complacent, why aren’t we laying awake at night?

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And I want to tell you that we are laying awake at night, that

we are very concerned, that this agency is about continuous improvement and that we are constantly looking and working very

long hours in an effort to get out in front of those that mean to do

us harm.

So there’s a very—I am very proud of the staff at the NRC, and

we are very much focused, again, on trying to search for continuous

improvement, and we are not lackadaisical. We are—I am not saying that we are, but, again——

Mr. SHAYS. I think you have judged us fairly well in terms of our

concern.

I have a feeling that the way we set up DOE, we have those who

promote and those who are looking to be the inspectors and to do

security. And I feel for some reason we still don’t have that separation with NRC. I don’t know why we don’t.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. That’s why I am raising it. I am trying to, in

words at least, say it—and then through everything that we have

tried to do in our explanation. Because we are not sure that our

issues have stuck.

Mr. SHAYS. I think you are going to have a hard time convincing

us in that area. By setting up a separate organization, there will

be some natural tensions that I don’t think exist within the NRC,

and so I think you are going to have some real skepticism on our

part about that. And so I understand that you have divided responsibilities. That’s the challenge.

Mr. REYES. I just want to thank the committee for inviting us

here. We are looking forward to coming back and keeping you updated on the action we are taking. We do want to ask your support

on the legislative request that we have in front of Congress. It is

of the most importance, that those laws are passed so we can protect our nuclear power plants better.

Thank you very much.

Mr. SHAYS. Hold on 1 second. OK. I want to put it on the record.

I would like you to just ask this question or make this point and

have you react to it.

Mr. HALLORAN. This is the point that I think you made before,

in terms of the zeal of the regulatory effort. DOE is an operator of

sites, NRC is a regulator, so you are necessarily one step removed

from turning the knobs and——

Mr. REYES. We are.

Mr. HALLORAN [continuing]. And putting up the fences. So that

dictates some different operational structures and ways to get

things done, doesn’t necessarily demand a lesser intensity level,

but I think it does require a different approach.

Mr. SHAYS. See, I think he gave a better answer than you did.

He made a better defense of your case, I think. I wanted to put it

on the record. I am making an assumption. I made a parallel in

which I am being challenged, and that is that the parallel isn’t the

same—that you are a regular. I guess, I also view you as promoters

of the industry. I do feel that way. So, at any rate——

Anything else to put on the record?

Mr. REYES. No. We want to reinforce the legislative request that

we have then. We really need those legislative enhancements.

Thank you very much.

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Mr. SHAYS. Don’t be offended I said he did a better job. He is a

really bright guy.

Mr. REYES. No, we are not.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you for waiting, and I appreciate your willingness to fit into our needs. Thank you very much.

Mr. REYES. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I will call on our last panel—thank you for being

here.

Mr. Alex Matthiessen, director, Hudson Riverkeeper, Garrison,

NY; Mr. David Lochbaum, the Union of Concerned Scientists,

based in Washington, DC; and Mr. Marvin Fertel, vice president

and chief nuclear officer at Nuclear Energy Institute.

With that, if you would—thank you for standing.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. I would note for the record our witnesses responded

in the affirmative.

Mr. Fertel, you were a dead giveaway in the audience because

any time the Commission made a comment that you liked you

smiled broadly, and I thought—you would not be a good poker

player, sir.

Mr. FERTEL. I am just too straight.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Well, that’s a good answer.

All right. Mr. Matthiessen, we will start with you; and we will

just go right down the line. Thank you very much.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. Terrific.

Mr. SHAYS. Nice to have you all here.

STATEMENTS OF ALEX MATTHIESSEN, DIRECTOR, HUDSON

RIVERKEEPER, GARRISON, NY; DAVID LOCHBAUM, UNION

OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS, WASHINGTON, DC; AND

MARVIN FERTEL, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF NUCLEAR

OFFICER, NUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. Thank you for having me, Chairman Shays,

members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to

once again testify on safety and security at Indian Point; and thank

you, Congressman Shays, for your leadership to date on this issue.

I also want to say I was very encouraged by the line of questioning, questions that we heard from members of the subcommittee

today.

Riverkeeper is not and has never been an anti-nuclear organization. Our campaign aims only to minimize the risks associated with

the Indian Point nuclear facility and by necessity aid in the reform

of those Federal and State agencies and policies governing the

plant.

Three years after September 11, Indian Point still is unprepared

to repel an attack from the air, land or water or a combination

thereof. While improvements have been made at the margins, there

remain gaping holes in Indian Point security. On the ground, current guards tell us that in some areas security at the plant is

worse than it was before September 11, 2001. The spent fuel pools

remain largely unprotected.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say something to you. When you make

a comment like that, this is a comment that you are saying under

oath. So this is not casual comments, correct?

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Mr. MATTHIESSEN. No.

OK. This is based on conversations that I have had with a current security guard at the plant, and he is relaying, in turn, comments that he has gotten from other guards.

Many of the best-trained and most-experienced guards have been

fired or have quit. This is according to the guard’s report that we

have heard only a week and a half or 2 weeks ago—morale is low,

and guards say they feel no obligation to stay on their posts in

event of an attack. A chilled environment exists at the plant, and

Entergy management is apparently still telling security personnel

to alter incident reports.

There are no specific defenses against an aerial attack at Indian

Point—no no-fly zone, no combat patrols, no anti- aircraft missiles,

nothing.

From the water, there is no physical barrier to prevent a tanker

or a speedboat loaded with explosives from plowing into the cooling

water intakes.

With regard to the NRC’s force-on-force security drills, they are

a joke—but not a funny one. The NRC drills are designed to allow

nuclear systems to game the system. Everyone knows that if real

conditions were used and no limits put on well-trained mock

attackers, the plans would fail nearly every time.

Again, I have details reported by POGO and other groups as well

as the guards themselves.

A head-in-the-sand mindset has a fever grip on the NRC and

FEMA, which has refused to accept the new threat level and revamp organizations accordingly. The NRC and FEMA are captive

to the industry they regulate, and the Department of Homeland Security has failed to assert itself. As a result, these agencies have

little credibility with the American people, which in turn undermines public safety.

Allow me to identify just three of many problems plaguing the

NRC:

First, the NRC resists the need to consider terrorism in administrative proceedings, and yet they routinely invoke terrorism to justify a new wave of policies designed to thwart the public’s right and

need to scrutinize the industry.

Second, the NRC’s new design base threat level is set too low.

David Lochbaum will cover this in detail, but allow me to add that

there remains a considerable gap between the level of defense plant

operators are expected to provide and what the U.S. military is

prepared to deploy.

Finally, the NRC continues to enact policies that allow it and the

nuclear industry to operate in increasing secrecy and with reduced

transparency and public participation. I assure you—and I know

you know this—that the less the public is able to see the more dangerous this industry will become.

Now moving into recommendations. The best way to truly minimize the public health and safety risks at Indian Point is to close

the plant and secure the onsite spent fuel. However, so long as Indian Point is still operating, there are numerous ways to better

protect the plant. I will highlight those three or four measures that

I think are the most urgent and readily achievable.

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First, we must secure the plant against aerial or waterborne attacks, which we can do with relatively inexpensive passive technologies. Installing a Beamhenge system, a line of steel beams set

vertically in deep concrete foundations connected by a web of highstrength cables, wires and netting, would effectively shield the facility’s vital components and structures. Beamhenge is essentially

the nuclear grade equivalent of the fences erected around golf driving ranges. Dunlop barriers, inflated cylinders of rubber-coated textile linked together or anchored to a mooring buoy, should be installed in the Hudson River in front of Indian Point to help protect

the plant’s cooling water structures. Already in place at several

Navy bases, Dunlop barriers are used to thwart small boat terrorist

attacks.

Second, we must establish a temporary no-fly zone over Indian

Point, combined with combat air patrols, at least until the passive

defense systems are in place.

Third, Congress must direct the NRC to deal more aggressively

with the highly vulnerable spent fuel stored at nuclear reactor

sites. The best way to do that is to install hardened onsite storage

systems, or HOSS, which is designed to contain isolated radiation

and repel terrorist attacks.

Finally, Congress must direct the NRC and FEMA to revamp

their policies and regulations governing nuclear plant security and

emergency preparedness.

I have a whole laundry list of specifics there, but I will wait until

the Q&A—if I have the opportunity to list those—in the interest

of time.

In general, though, I think it would be good for Congress to consider appointing a task force made up of governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders to do a top-to-bottom review of the NRC

and FEMA’s oversight of this industry.

In conclusion, little has changed since September 11 regarding

the level of security at Indian Point. Federal agencies remain in a

state of denial regarding the security threat facing nuclear facilities. Congress needs to ask the NRC and the industry—and I am

paraphrasing the gentleman who was from the NRC who was here

just a minute ago—if you are so concerned and laying awake at

night, why aren’t you concerned about deploying the most obvious

and inexpensive security measures at our most vulnerable and

high-risk nuclear plants?

Whether they admit it or not, I believe the answer is quite simple. The industry and the NRC don’t want to draw public attention

to the intrinsic danger of nuclear power and the naked vulnerability of these facilities to terrorist attack, especially at a time

when the industry is hoping to build a whole new generation of nuclear energy plants.

The Federal Government’s current approach to nuclear plant security and emergency preparedness is leading us down a path that

could—God forbid—result in a far more terrifying attack than what

we experienced that horrible day 3 years ago. We have received the

warning signs regarding the possibility of and our vulnerability to

a terrorist attack on a U.S. nuclear power plant, much as the government had received warnings about the September 11 attacks.

Let’s not give a future 9/11 Commission the opportunity to say we

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knew a nuclear attack on a power plant was possible and we did

too little to stop it or to minimize the impacts.

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to share my

views today.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Matthiessen.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Matthiessen follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Lochbaum.

Mr. LOCHBAUM. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this opportunity to present our views on nuclear power plant security.

Today’s open hearing demonstrates that nuclear plant security

issues can be responsibly discussed in public, a fact lost upon the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC essentially closed its

doors to the public on this important topic since September 11.

That’s unacceptable, and we urge the Congress to compel the NRC

to follow its lead by including the public in policy discussions.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s a very interesting point. It has never occurred

to me that it’s being used. The irony is it is being used as an excuse not to have the dialog when we need the dialog even more.

Mr. LOCHBAUM. But it is also forcing groups like ours to go to

other avenues since they have closed our doors, and the media and

other outlets are the way we find our voice since they have closed

our voice. They would probably prefer that they had those comments in house than seeing them in headlines.

Mr. SHAYS. Good point.

Mr. LOCHBAUM. A successful attack on a nuclear power plant

would be one of the worst disasters in American history. That this

threat is real is revealed by two simple facts. First, the nuclear industry urged this Congress to renew Price-Anderson Federal liability protection for nuclear power plants. If an attack could not cause

catastrophic harm, owners could get private insurance coverage.

Second, the nuclear industry claims to have spent more than $1

billion upgrading security since September 11. No one has enough

money to spend on pseudo threats.

After September 11, the industry issued orders requiring plants

to take steps to make facilities less vulnerable to attack.

The NRC also revamped its oversight process. The steps we liked

most among them are frequency of NRC-evaluated force-on-force

security test was increased to once every 3 years from once every

8 years, the number of design basis threat adversaries was increased, and many of the unrealistic limitations on their weapons

and tactics were lessened or removed.

Minimum standards have been established for training and

qualifications of security force personnel, and working hour limits

for security force personnel were mandated by the NRC.

Despite these steps taken, nuclear power plants remain vulnerable to attack by land, sea and by air. The American public cannot

honestly be assured that all reasonable measures to protect them

have been taken until the following 10 steps are taken:

The two-person rule and/or expanded in-plant use of security

monitoring cameras needs to be done to better control vital access

to areas.

The evaluation process for proposed procedure revisions and

hardware modifications must formally verify whether protection

against sabotage is affected by the planned changes.

The NRC must not allow the same company to provide both the

attackers and the defenders in force-on-force security tests.

The NRC must increase its design basis threat level to a realistic

level comparable to that established by the DOE after September

11.

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The NRC must either require background checks for nuclear

plant workers with access to sensitive plant information or to prevent these workers from accessing that information.

The NRC must require water barriers around intake structures

at nuclear power plants.

The NRC must require protection against aircraft hazards similar to the process it used to protect the plants against fire hazards.

The Federal Government’s ability to withstand or respond an attack designed above the design basis threat level must be periodically demonstrated.

The NRC must require adequate protection for spent fuel by requiring owners to transfer fuel discharged from the reactor more

than 5 years ago into dry casks which are emplaced within earth

berms and other protective devices.

And last—or, actually, first—the NRC must reengage the public

in security policy discussions.

I would like to highlight two of those recommendations. The others are detailed further in my written testimony.

Right now, spent fuel at nuclear power plants is not as safe or

as secure as it should be. Many plants have five to eight times as

much spent fuel as fuel in the reactor. There are fewer barriers

that attackers must penetrate in order to successfully damage

spent fuel. And, correspondingly, there are fewer barriers protecting the public from the radioactivity released from damaged fuel.

At most plants, the spent fuel pools are filled to overflowing.

Spent fuel is then loaded into dry casks and placed out on open air

lots out back. In fact, the current scheme of spent fuel storage

could hardly be made less safe or less secure. By maintaining the

spent fuel pools at or near full capacity, the risk is kept as high

as it possibly can get. Transferring spent fuel into dry casks merely

adds the additional risk of spent fuel out in the backyard.

The responsible thing to do would be to minimize the inventory

in spent pool fuels by transferring fuel discharged from the reactor

more than 5 years ago into dry casks, which are then placed in

earthen walls or other protective devices. The risk reduction by

emptying the spent pool would more than offset the increased risk

from dry cask storage resulting in overall tangible reduction in the

risk profile at each plant site.

The second recommendation I will highlight involves access to

sensitive information. As this subcommittee has discussed, the

NRC’s imposed restrictions as recently as August 4th on the

public’s access to information after September 11. But there is a

huge loophole. The access authorization upgrades mandated by the

NRC after September 11 only apply to nuclear plant workers who

get unrestricted access. There are literally thousands of nuclear

plant workers with ready access to sensitive plant information that

do not get unescorted access and therefore are not subject to background checks. Our enemies can get those jobs and obtain blueprint calculations, risk assessment hazards and analysis and upcoming equipment outage schedules useful in planning an attack.

The NRC has to plug this loophole. It makes little sense to restrict public access to information while allowing the equivalent of

uncontrolled drive-through service at the plants themselves.

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Before I close, I would like to take a moment to defend the NRC

from the chairman’s concerns about the 6-year security upgrade

schedule. That’s actually the NRC’s express lane. You should see

their pace at resolving safety issues. By comparison, 6 years is the

blink of an eye.

Mr. Chairman, I sincerely thank you for holding this open hearing and for listening to the public perspectives on this important

issue.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lochbaum follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Fertel.

Mr. FERTEL. Thank you, Chairman Shays.

Given the importance of security at our nuclear plants today, I

generally speak with the chief officers that operate those plants

weekly, and I find I am getting to know a lot of the security managers personally. During the past 3 years, the industry has carried

out unprecedented, unequalled efforts to review and improve our

security; and I think during the discussion today the term business

as usual, the lack of intensity and not exchanging lessons learned

was used. I can only say that it’s anything but business as usual.

It’s pretty intense, and we are exchanging lessons learned almost

weekly. So I think there is a lot going on that I wish maybe we

could share more with Dave and his colleagues.

I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of nuclear

power to our Nation. Our Nation’s 103 reactors safely and cleanly

produce enough electricity to power one in every five homes and

businesses in the United States. Many regions are heavily dependent on nuclear energy. For example, in the chairman’s State of

Connecticut, electricity from nuclear provides 50 percent of the

power in that State; and these plants also provide an additional

benefit of stabilizing the electricity grid.

I would like to emphasize three major points today regarding the

security of our nuclear power plants:

First, nuclear power plants were the most secure industrial facilities in the United States before September 11th and against terrorist attacks, and they are even more secure today.

Second, power plants can serve as a model of industrial security

in America. Our plants are far more secure than any other sector

of our Nation’s infrastructure and have been recognized as such by

several independent organizations and security experts.

Third, while the industry is fully committed to protecting its employees, the public and its assets, our companies have maximized

the level of protection they can reasonably provide to these facilities.

Although we coordinate extensively with government entities on

security matters, continued emphasis on integrated response planning is necessary; and there are important legal and policy limitations to further increasing the security requirements that the operators of the plant have to satisfy.

As you know, nuclear power plants were built to be robust and

secure. A nuclear reactor is secured by several feet of concrete

walls and an internal barrier of steel reinforced concrete. They

were built to contain the effects of a reactor accident and also to

withstand natural accidents such as hurricanes, earthquakes, fires

and floods.

Even before the September 11th attacks, every nuclear plant was

protected by a strategy that included protective perimeters, physical barriers, sophisticated access authorization technology and a

professional, well-armed security force. We conduct background

checks on all of our employees and strictly control access to our

plants.

After September 11th, the industry—in response to orders issued

by the NRC—enhanced security at our plants significantly. Each

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nuclear power plant is scheduled to meet the requirements of the

most recent NRC security orders by the October 29th deadline.

Over the past 3 years, we have expanded our security force by

60 percent, from 5,000 to 8,000 security officers at the 64 sites.

During that time, the industry has spent about $1 billion to increase the security force and to significantly enhance physical protection at the plant. About two-thirds of that or more is physical

protection. So there are things happening at the plants.

My written testimony provides details regarding these improvements. However, some of them are considered safeguard information and thus not available to the public.

As part of the new security requirements, each plant will conduct

multiple—and I repeat—multiple force-on-force exercises every

year. The NRC formally evaluates each plant’s force-on-force exercise at least once every 3 years, as you have heard before.

In these exercises, the NRC evaluates the execution of the security strategy, the performance of the plant security force and strategy, the performance of the plant security force and the performance of the independently trained adversary force used in the mock

attacks.

I am looking forward to questions on why we hired Wackenhut,

which I am sure we will get. We can talk about that. We think it

is the right thing to do. We think it will enhance security at the

plants.

Given the September 11th attacks, we also significantly increased our cooperation and coordination with State and local law

enforcement. We have worked closely with the NRC, the Department of Homeland Security and other Federal, State and local authorities, with the goal of building a seamless security for our

plants.

However, additional emphasis on integrated response planning is

needed; and there are important legal implications to us doing certain things that we don’t have the authority to do, that we need

help from the governmental entities to do.

Mr. Matthiessen’s testimony provides results from a new report

by Riverkeeper on the consequences of possible terrific attack on

the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York. I just want to

take a minute to discuss that report.

The industry always welcomes meaningful technical analysis of

our nuclear facilities. However, this Riverkeeper report is more of

the Hollywood equivalent of merging plots of ‘‘The Perfect Storm,’’

‘‘The Day After Tomorrow’’ and ‘‘Independence Day’’ and trying to

sell it to the public as a realistic scenario. Simply, the likelihood

of the accident sequence in this report leading to a release of radiation is so incredibly low that it is not credible.

With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to include in

the record an analysis of the Riverkeeper report recently prepared

by leading technical experts. Thank you.

Mr. KUCINICH [presiding]. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fertel follows:]

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Mr. KUCINICH. I would like to begin with some questions of Mr. Lochbaum. The industry claims to have spent $1 billion since September 11 upgrading nuclear plant security. What does that claim

tell you?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. Well, I think it speaks to how unprepared we

were on September 11th, because that’s money that wasn’t spent

until afterward. And I also think it reminds me of the billion dollars that was spent fixing safety problems at Millstone or the hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent fixing problems at the

Davis-Besse plant.

Mr. KUCINICH. I think they spent about $600 million there and about $1 billion at Indian Point to restore plants to a safe level.

So how many billions will it take to increase security, in your estimation, to adequate levels?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. I don’t think it’s a question of money. I don’t

think there’s that much money left to be spent. I think it’s more

of an attitude question that this subcommittee has explored. I

think it’s more of a focus and just getting serious about it, more

so than the dollar amount, that is preventing it so far. I think the

fact that they have been able to do as much as they have behind

closed doors is the biggest barrier to getting it done right.

Mr. KUCINICH. And, in your thinking about this, have you

thought about some alternatives to this such as solar, wind? Has

the NRC and, to your understanding, or the industry spent any

money for security at these facilities?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. Well, if you look at the $1 billion that the industry has spent on upgrading nuclear power plant security and compare that to the amount that’s been spent upgrading at wind farms

or other renewable technology, if it’s been $100, it would probably

high.

Mr. KUCINICH. Would these wind farms be less of a target?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. There’s no real hazard there, so there’s no real

need to provide $1 billion of security to something that is not a

hazard to the American people.

But the real question is—and it is something beyond me to an- swer—but is it really worth spending $1 billion protecting Americans or is it better to spend the $1 billion more productively in providing an energy technology that doesn’t provide that risk to ourselves?

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, you make a series of recommendations in

your testimony how to improve physical security at nuclear plants.

Do you want to offer to this committee what recommendations you

think should be implemented first?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. If I had one to pick from, it would be the spent

fuel pool issue, in reducing the threat from spent fuel. Right now,

from both a safety standpoint and a security standpoint, we are

doing that wrong.

Mr. KUCINICH. Let me ask you something. Why this issue of the

transfer of the cask?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. Right.

Mr. KUCINICH. Why has this transfer of spent fuel into dry cask

not been done before now?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. We started doing it in 1986 in this country. At

that time, the casks that we were using could only be used for storVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:00 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00226 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98358.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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age, not for transport. So there was a reluctance to transfer things

into dry cask that would then have to be handled twice. Nowadays,

the casks that we have can be used for storage and transport. You

are going to have to put it in the cask eventually. Why not do it

now where it improves safety, it improves the security, and it

doesn’t affect the cost that much?

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, just have another question for Mr.

Fertel.

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. You may have as much time as you want.

Mr. KUCINICH. Earlier you heard it brought into the discussion,

the situation at Davis-Besse. Would you characterize—are you familiar with it?

Mr. FERTEL. Yes, I am.

Mr. KUCINICH. Would you say the events surrounding DavisBesse are an exception or the rule in the nuclear industry?

Mr. FERTEL. I would say they were the exception, and it was an

unacceptable exception.

Going back to questions asked by this committee about lessons

learned, following the Davis-Besse event there was a significant

lesson learned in our industry resulting in a major materials initiative to make sure that we are looking at materials degradation everywhere in the plant in a much more systemic and integrated

way.

It’s been a very painful lesson for FirstEnergy. It’s been a very

painful lesson for FirstEnergy, and it’s been a very painful lesson

for people like yourself, I am sure. It’s actually turned out, for the

rest of our industry, something that has focused us much better

looking at materials issues. We were spending almost $60 million

a year looking at materials issues, so it wasn’t something being ignored.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you have learned something from what has

happened.

Mr. FERTEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. In the end, you think it will result in more sensitivity from these other plants and in the long run there is good

that might come from it.

Mr. FERTEL. There is good that’s come already, sir, as far as a

much better technical look at this, a much stronger and integrated

look at the analyses, the inspections that you need to do, and clearly a much better awareness at every plant of the importance and

the safety culture aspects related to it. So, yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. Just a final question which you are anticipating.

What about these force-on-force exercises? I mean, shouldn’t they

contain an element of surprise?

Mr. FERTEL. Well, yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. Are you surprised that they did?

Mr. FERTEL. Again, I think people have talked about the DOE

exercise a lot. And let’s talk about the new requirements NRC has

put in for force-on-force exercises and deal with that and let me

talk about the Wackenhut issue, since everybody else has mentioned it so far today.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK.

Mr. FERTEL. We used to do force-on-force exercises at nuclear

power plants every 7 years. NRC now will come in and they will

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evaluate them at least once every 3 years, but that’s just part of

the story. They have established standards for what the training

needs to be for not only the people that protect the plant but for

the adversaries, the qualifications for not only the people that protect the plant but the adversaries.

We are going to be doing multiple force-on-force exercises, in addition to normal training and gun firing and things like that—real

force-on-force exercises, every plant every year. I can’t tell you how

many, which is silly to me, but it is safeguards, and I don’t know

why. I think that’s a silly thing.

When we in the industry looked at this, we said, the way we

should do this, the same model for training operators. We should

go to a systemic approach to training, which is a very rigorous way

to do it. Make sure we have the discipline in our system for security activity just like we do for operator training. That’s what we

are doing.

We also looked at and we said, the way these force-on-force exercises are done—and, Mr. Turner, I think said that, at DOE, the

Secretary had formed a special adversary group. Those are DOE

people. They are not outsiders. OK.

When the U.S. Army does their war games, they use the U.S.

Army. OK. They don’t bring the Russians in. You know, they don’t

bring in other bad guys. They do it professionally.

Mr. KUCINICH. From what I understand, if I may, they don’t describe information ahead of time as to——

Mr. FERTEL. I will get the information. The information that is

described ahead of time in force-on-force exercises now.

You do need to know when they are going to do it at the site.

Because, while you are doing an exercise, there’s real guys with

real guns protecting the site. So people need to know that you are

going to do an exercise at that site. That’s known.

Outside of that, they don’t know. They don’t go—I don’t know

what happened at the Y–12 facility. It’s the first I heard of it, because I don’t follow the DOE stuff where they said what facility

they were going to attack.

But, as Luis Reyes said, this scenario that they do on the attack

and the way NRC is doing this is being developed by NRC. They

decide what the attack is, whether it’s to go for spent fuel. The adversaries know that. They get help from an insider. The defensive

guys don’t know this.

Mr. KUCINICH. So Wackenhut then, the guy wouldn’t cheat at

mock drills at NRC facilities, but we have something on the record

that suggests that at DOE facilities it might be a little different.

Mr. FERTEL. I don’t know whether Wackenhut would cheat at

anything. I think human beings cheat. Human beings make mistakes, and human beings do things they shouldn’t.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well——

Mr. FERTEL. The people that we have running this CAF team,

OK, the people that are doing this Composite Adversary Force, the

three top people that are running that basically are all Special

Forces, OK? They never worked for the industry before. The project

manager has 10 years as a Ranger. One of the team leaders was

a team leader for the Delta Force. The other team leader is a special ops guy who ran a whole bunch of guys that did all types of

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things like snipers and everything else. These guys want to win,

OK? They are out there to do the best job they can and to win.

On our side—and I think this gets lost in almost every discussion

about nuclear energy. I think it’s important. I certainly feel as passionately about this, Congressman, as you do about your DavisBesse experience. I know a lot of people that work at the plants.

I find it insulting personally when their integrity is challenged all

the time, OK?

I think David Lochbaum offers a lot of positive things that have

helped us in a number of areas of safety, and I may agree with

some insecurity issues, some of which are being dealt with. That’s

helpful. But the people at the plants who work there—but who do

you think gets killed first if terrorists attack and win? They do.

OK? Who do you think gets hurt if something happens at a plant

and something happens offsite? Their family, their friends and

their neighbors. So the implication that they don’t care I think is

actually really wrong.

Now that doesn’t mean you don’t make mistakes. It doesn’t mean

you can’t do things better. I think that’s one of the things we really

want to do. We talked about sleeping guards and so forth and what

happens with energy. What happened at sites where that happened

is they fired them.

Mr. KUCINICH. When you said the implication they don’t care,

who are you speaking of?

Mr. FERTEL. Well, I mean, that’s the way most of the discussion

has gone, to be honest. You know, well, if NRC isn’t doing this, the

plants wouldn’t; and, gee, the guys at the plants don’t care unless

David Lochbaum or Alex Matthiessen are involved.

I am not saying they shouldn’t be involved. All I am saying is

that the people that work at those plants care as much about safety and security as anybody who sits up here talking with us or

talking to you. I think we need to understand that.

Mr. KUCINICH. I don’t know that there is anybody on this committee that would dispute that.

Mr. FERTEL. I am glad to hear that.

Mr. KUCINICH. Except, you know, for one qualification. And that

is that you know and I know that all of these people who care so

much about doing the right job for themselves, their co-workers,

their family or community, there’s a few people that make the decision. Now, granted, my experience is greatly informed by something in my own backyard. I understand that.

Mr. FERTEL. I understand that.

Mr. KUCINICH. When we know that photos in this hole in the reactor head were kept out of the file deliberately, when we know

this thing wasn’t reported, when we know when the NRC had full

information they didn’t move forward to act on it, I know that, too.

So I am not using that to impugn the whole industry.

I have given you an opportunity to acquit the industry, and you

did. But, you know, I am saying that when you have one problem

like that, because we are talking about nuclear power plants, it requires the utmost in terms of accountability, and that’s what this

committee is about.

I want to thank the gentleman and thank the Chair for his indulgence. Thank you.

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Mr. SHAYS. I am going to, at this time, turn to the professional

staff to ask some questions.

Mr. CHASE. Thanks.

Mr. Fertel, a quick question. NRC says that it’s going to take 3

years to implement and to test the new security plans. You are saying that there will be force-on-force exercises every year. What goes

into developing these force-on-force exercises, having seen a number of them. The question I have is, has any thought been given

to prioritizing these force-on-force exercises? There are a number of

plants that are in the more densely populated areas. Indian Point

is one example. Has any thought been given in terms of prioritizing

where and when we should do these exercises?

Mr. FERTEL. First of all, NRC is making all those decisions. The

plants have no idea until a set period before the exercise that the

planning can be done. So if I’m at the end of next year, I don’t

know now, I’ll know within a few weeks because they’ve got to do

planning.

There has been some of what you’ve asked for already done. Because NRC has been doing a pilot and a transitional force-on-force

exercise program for the last 2 years; and over the latter part of

this year, it’s been testing the new design basis threat as part of

it. Even though you don’t have everything necessarily in place, you

knew what you were going to do and you were able to test it. And

what they have chosen—for instance, Indian Point. Indian Point

has already had both a force-on-force and an integrated response

and an emergency planning exercise.

So I think the NRC has attempted to do some of that.

My understanding—and, again, I’m giving you kind of an arm’s

length because they make the decision—is that there is probably

about 30 sites that haven’t gone through the force-on-force, and

those are the ones that haven’t gone through the transitional period in the last year and a half or two. Those are the ones that they

would pick from for the first year starting November of this year,

and I think they will prioritize their—based upon looking at factors

like where the site is, when was the last time they actually exercised, and things like that. So, to some degree, it’s being done already.

Mr. CHASE. But a concern could be that the force-on-force exercises that were done or have been done to date are under the old

DBT, not under the new DBT.

Mr. FERTEL. Some were.

Mr. CHASE. So what I’m asking is, under the new DBT, we know

that it’s stronger, supposedly stronger. Have they given any

thought to prioritizing?

Mr. FERTEL. They haven’t shared that with us. And to be honest,

they don’t want to share it with us because they don’t want to give

the sites much lead time in knowing what’s going on.

Now, again, starting in November, starting actually later this

year, every site will start doing their own force-on-force exercises

as part of what they have to do, and it’s more than one a year per

site, absent NRC. And, as I think Roy Zimmerman said, they will

probably have their residents and others observing lots of those.

And my guess is they could do that, because every site, whether

it’s an Indian Point site or it’s North Anna, will be doing them as

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part of their normal routine annual training that they’re going to

have to do. But I don’t have an explicit answer to your question

because NRC controls that.

Mr. CHASE. Do either of the other witnesses want to comment?

OK.

Mr. Matthiessen, I’m curious. On what basis do you conclude the

NRC-revised DBT is too low?

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. Well, on what basis do I—well, just because

the DOE is requiring greater DBT and also because I think in a

post September 11 world we have to be thinking in terms of the

most sophisticated, multi-directional suicidal attacks. And from

what I know—and I obviously can’t repeat it here—the NRC has

only bumped up its DBT marginally, and I think there really needs

to be a much more serious level.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just ask you, though. I mean, basically, why

would you be in a position to know what the DBT was?

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. Why would I be in a position to know what

it is?

Mr. SHAYS. It’s not public.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. Well, I don’t know specifically what it is. I

have an indication or a sense of what it is.

Mr. SHAYS. So it’s admittedly third-hand concerns.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. It is. But I take it on pretty good——

Mr. SHAYS. You all tend to get your information fairly accurately,

but I was just curious.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. I would just love to make a comment in response to Mr. Fertel, if I could. I just want to mention that he mentioned the force-on-force drill at Indian Point and the emergency

planning exercises that were done earlier this summer. I would

just suggest that if those are any indication of what the rest of the

industry can look forward to, then I think we are in trouble, and

I think that the public should be very, very concerned.

In the case of the emergency planning exercise that was done,

the NRC, in what looked like a PR move more than a serious test

of emergency planning, did conduct a terrorist mock attack on the

plant. But, unfortunately, the test didn’t involve any release of radiation whatsoever. So as far as I was concerned, they might as

well have been testing the security or emergency planning around

a Wal-Mart. I mean, the whole point of doing these emergency

plans is because nuclear reactors are a special case, they contain

materials that are very, very dangerous, and what we need to

think about is a worst-case scenario, and a worst-case scenario does

involve the release of radiation.

And, likewise, for the force-on-force test, again, they tend to get

advance notice, way in advance. The operators, from what we’ve

heard again from security guards inside the plant, spent a lot of

time and money beefing up security to abnormal levels in anticipation of the actual day. The attacks happen in day light over prescribed routes. From what we understand, the mock terrorists were

not trained at terrorist levels and not equipped with the kind of

weaponry that terrorists would likely have.

So, again, I think that the integrity of these exercises is not what

it needs to be if we are serious about truly testing the ability of

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these plants to repel a terrorist attack and to evacuate and protect

people in the event of a terrorist attack.

Mr. SHAYS. If you could just respond to that last point.

Mr. FERTEL. Just on the force-on-force at Indian Point, I was not

there, so I can’t verify; and I don’t think Alex was there, either.

But I do know that one of the reasons I heard that they do do night

exercises as part of force-on-force, it’s pretty routine. I think at Indian Point they made a conscious decision because of the terrain

and the danger that they were not going to do it as part of this

pilot program when they were doing it, and I understand that was

a very conscious decision to avoid personnel injury at the point.

But night exercises are part of force-on-force.

Coming up November 1st, when these orders are effective, all the

adversaries will have to meet the standards both for their capability and their fitness that the NRC has set. And that’s pretty good

standards. And, again, that’s a major improvement over before September 11, to be honest, and as will the defenders. So I would expect, Alex, that you will see—I can only go by what you said on

Indian Point, but you will see improved force-on-force at Indian

Point as they start their exercises.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. I hope so, but we may not see the results for

another 3 years.

Can I just ask a question of Mr. Fertel?

Mr. SHAYS. No.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. Sorry.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s all right. You can ask us a question if you

would like. What’s the question you would like us to ask him?

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. Well, I would just like to ask why—what is

the industry and the NRC’s response for not instituting what we

see as pretty straightforward measures that wouldn’t even cost the

industry that much that would add an enormous measure as far

as we have been led to believe.

Mr. SHAYS. Such as?

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. A couple of the passive systems, barriers that

I mentioned in my testimony, the Dunlop barriers and the

Beamhenge, these are ways that you would really—you’d go a long

way toward protecting these facilities and——

Mr. SHAYS. We will make sure that we have a dialog about that.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. OK.

Mr. CHASE. Mr. Fertel, how optimistic are you that the industry—according to GAO and the NRC, they are saying that the implementation of the security plans are going to take place by the

end of October of this year. How confident are you that’s going to

actually happen?

Mr. FERTEL. As of 2 weeks ago, everybody was on schedule to be

able to meet the requirements of the orders by October 29th.

There’s some issues where people may not have the picture that

the chairman liked of the bullet-resistant enclosure that protects

the officers. There are some plants that may have some problems

in getting deliveries of some of those and will have to take other

actions, and that’s mainly because our soldiers in Iraq and our Defense Department and the DOE are getting priority. There’s only

two sources of steel for those, apparently; and our guys get bumped

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a bit on that. But, otherwise, we are going to be ready on October

29th.

Mr. CHASE. And, last, Mr. Matthiessen, would you share with us

your thoughts or give us the status on the—if you can recall. The

concerns regarding evacuation plans in New York and Connecticut.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. I mean, again, what concerns me so much is

that the FEMA used to have a policy of requiring certification of

the plans by the four counties that surround the plant as well as

the State. But a couple years ago, after the Witt report came out

and showed pretty conclusively that this plan couldn’t work in the

event of a terrorist attack on the plant, especially—or, sorry, a radioactive release, especially in the case of a fast-breaking release,

these counties became very uncomfortable and became convinced

that it really wasn’t possible to evacuate or even shelter people in

place of a level that would be satisfactory, and so they withdrew

that certification, as did the State emergency management office.

And the FEMA came out, as you probably know, last August and

just rubber-stamped the emergency plan without any evidence—not

providing any evidence—this shouldn’t be safeguards information,

most of it anyway—without any evidence or analysis upon which

they base that conclusion. And, of course, the NRC came out and

rubber-stamped it a half an hour later, on a Friday in late July.

And this is kind of typical of these agencies.

And, again, I think you don’t have to be a James Lee Witt that,

given the road congestion, given the population densities, there is

just no way that you could realistically evacuate that area or shelter people in place.

Second, I do want to make a comment on the——

Mr. SHAYS. I’m sorry, I need to interrupt you.

Mr. MATTHIESSEN. I’m sorry.

Mr. SHAYS. I have a need to be sitting at a desk at 2 in order

to not lose my place in another committee hearing. So, if that’s all

right, let me just go on and ask.

What I’m wrestling with, Mr. Lochbaum, is—first of all, Mr.

Fertel, what I’m the wrestling with is that I think the industry

needs to do a better job, as much as you point out it was one of

the most secure industries before September 11, because I think

that we are going to have to have a very significant debate about

the future of nuclear energy. And I wrestle as an environmentalist

with the fact that, if I want to get at greenhouse gases, is there

a role that nuclear energy has to play.

Right now, Millstone’s one, two, and three are about 50 percent

of Connecticut’s—based on your testimony, and it used to be more

when we had the Yankee plant plus one, two, and three—you

know, we were oversubscribed. But tell me how you sort out, Mr.

Lochbaum. Do you think nuclear energy simply can’t be expanded

at all?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. I guess we view nuclear energy as providing the

bridge to the future, with renewable energy technologies and improved energy efficiency being that future. But that future is, quite

frankly, not here today. So we think that the safe operation of existing plants, until the—as they reach in their normal lifetimes

they get replaced by better technologies of the 21st century technologies would be our druthers.

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Mr. SHAYS. This spent fuel is a huge concern to me. And, you

know, I see them at the facility on the Hudson River, you know,

saw the pool where they are at and so on. And they were in the

contained area, I believe, is my recall. But we just are collecting

more and more of this. Mr. Fertel, how do you wrestle with that?

Mr. FERTEL. Well, I think Congress clearly has a good role to

play in moving the ball forward on Yucca Mountain, funding it appropriately, providing the oversight to DOE to make sure they do

it appropriately and dealing with the issues around it will move

that ball forward. I think, in the interim, clearly you’re going to try

and do everything you can and are doing everything to manage it

safely from a security standpoint, NRC has issued advisories to the

plants on what they can do to improve security.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you this. How is it that we have been

able to increase production when we haven’t added a plant in 30

years?

Mr. FERTEL. Well, we actually have added a lot of plants in the

last 30 years. We just haven’t ordered a plant in that period.

Mr. SHAYS. We haven’t what?

Mr. FERTEL. We haven’t ordered a new one, but we’ve added

about 50 plants since 1980. But the way we have increased it in

the decade——

Mr. SHAYS. We’ve had 50 plants since 1980?

Mr. FERTEL. Yeah.

Mr. SHAYS. How many have we had since 1990?

Mr. FERTEL. As far as real plants, concrete and steel? Two, I

think.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. FERTEL. But we have added the equivalent of 19 since 1990

in improving output from the plants, operating them better, doing

a thing that we call uprates, where you can either improve the turbine or you can improve something on the reactor, on the reactor

side to get more power out of it. And we have added two plants.

So we’ve added about 19,000 megawatts since 1990 in kilowatt

hours out.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you all want to quickly speak to this issue of citations and whether they have to respond in writing or so on? I

mean, is this of concern? Or are we more concerned than we should

be?

Mr. LOCHBAUM. As Mr. Reyes said, it’s consistent with how they

deal with safety issues. So it’s the same approach. I also go back

to what Mr. Zimmerman said. They are piloting the new significance determination process.

Mr. SHAYS. And that’s a good thing.

Mr. LOCHBAUM. Well, it depends on how it comes out. It’s a trial

run now. But that could—depending on how that outcome is, could

go further to better defining that line between what gets reported

and what gets followed up, what the plant owners do and what the

NRC does. I’m comfortable with that. If there is a better way of

doing it, I’m open to that. But I bought into the process and I’m

comfortable with it the way it is.

Mr. FERTEL. I think an aspect that maybe could help your comfort level—because you clearly weren’t comfortable with it, listening to the discussion, is that I think the impression when they say

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they are doing a sample makes it sound like, oh, my God, they’re

just choosing a few. When they’re doing the sample, they are doing

a sample in security, they are doing a sample in safety, they are

doing samples in other areas. And what they are looking for, in all

honesty, is to see if there is any sort of a systemic breakdown in

the corrective action program that the plant uses. And if they see

a breakdown, well, then it’s a whole other ball game for the NRC

to come in and basically do major inspections. So they want your

processes to work; and, if they work, they are comfortable.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. I am going to adjourn.

Actually, there is one other question. If staff’s waiting for me—

I am going out that door and I’m hustling. I have a better feeling

of knowing the NRC is present every day. Are we underutilizing

those folks? If you don’t know, that’s another issue.

Mr. LOCHBAUM. We were concerned that—several years ago, the

NRC changed its policy, like in 1997, 1998. They used to have more

NRC resident inspectors, more people onsite. As part of a budgetcutting move, they removed some of the people from that onsite

presence. That contributed to the problem that Davis-Besse—that

Representative Kucinich is concerned about.

Mr. SHAYS. But it seems to me that they could be doing followup.

I mean, evidently, they have prescribed things they should do.

Mr. LOCHBAUM. It’s hard when there’s so few of them. If they

went back to the levels they had 5, 6 years ago, they could do more

because there were more people there.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, if you have two and you add one more, that’s

three. That’s a 50 percent increase. Maybe even that would be beneficial.

Mr. LOCHBAUM. It couldn’t hurt.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m sorry. I have a feeling there’s some other things

we could say, but it’s been a long day, and it’s been a very helpful

day, and I appreciate all your contribution. So, we are going to call

this hearing closed. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 2:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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