- WASHINGTON (UPI) - Federal
regulators have no set requirements for checking backgrounds of nuclear
plant security employees, and the Sept. 11 hijackers could have qualified
to work as security guards, according to a report released Monday by Rep.
Ed Markey, D-Mass.
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- The report also says most plants could not withstand
a plane crash.
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- Markey, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee, has been a critic of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for
years.
After the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon, he demanded
that the agency explain its security requirements for plant operators,
including employee screening ad ability to withstand terror attacks.
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- The responses did not sit well with the opponent of
nuclear
power.
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- "There is little comfort to be found in the agency's
response to my questions," Markey said in a statement. "Black
hole after black hole is described and unaddressed. Post 9/11, a nuclear
safety agency that does not know and seems little interested in finding
out the nationality of nuclear reactor workers or the level of resources
being spent on security at these sensitive facilities is not doing its
job."
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- Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade association
representing
the industry, disputes the allegations. A spokeswoman said the charges
were consistent with Markey's opposition to nuclear energy.
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- "The vast majority of this report is
inaccurate,"
said NEI spokeswoman Thelma Wiggins. "This is just part of Mr.
Markey's
long-standing attempt to shut down the nuclear power industry."
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- Markey also opposes domestic oil exploration such as
President Bush's proposal to drill in a tiny section of Alaska's mammoth
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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- He has called for federalizing safety at nuclear power
plants, even though problems with airport security have continued after
the costly federal takeover of airport security.
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- Foreigners Treated Better Than U.S.
Citizens
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- According to the NRC, employees with access to nuclear
power plants, mostly operated by private companies, need only to pass a
criminal background check that covers the United States. No investigation
into the background of a foreign citizen in his home country is
required.
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- The NRC was also unable to tell Markey the number of
foreign citizens working at nuclear facilities.
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- "In short, it appears that al Qaida operatives such
as Mohamed Atta or Marwan al Shehhi could pass the narrow nature of the
criminal screening still in use at U.S. nuclear power plants and gain
unescorted
access to the controlled area of the plant, just as they obtained student
visas to attend flight school," the report says. "As long as
they have no criminal record in this country, al Qaida operatives are not
required to pass any security check intended to find ad expose terrorist
links prior to their employment."
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- The NRC also does not require plant operators, or
licensees,
to provide detailed information on security operations to federal
regulators.
But Wiggins claims the report distorts the truth about measures put into
place to screen and monitor employees.
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- "Nuclear plant employees are required to pass
stringent
security and background checks," she said. "And their behavior
and performance is monitored daily. As an industry, employees get the same
background check performed by the FBI and this is mandated by the NRC.
They are constantly evaluated for fitness for duty."
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- As for the claims about foreigners working in plants,
Wiggins said the vast majority were longtime residents of the United
States,
usually educated in the country and with extensive work histories that
can be verified.
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- As for a terror attack similar to the Sept. 11 crashes
that took the lives of thousands, the Markey report finds serious design
problems with most of the 103 commercial reactors that would leave most
susceptible to an airline attack.
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- "There are 103 active civilian nuclear reactors
in the U.S.," the report says. "According to the NRC, the
licensees
of 43 of those reactors on 28 sites did not even consider the probability
of an accidental aircraft impact when the reactors were designed, built
and licensed. In an additional 56 reactors on 37 sites, the licensees
concluded
that the probability of a accidental was so low that it did not have to
be incorporated into the design of the reactors."
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- Twenty-one U.S. nuclear reactors are located within five
miles of an airport, but 96 percent of all U.S. reactors weren't designed
to withstand a crash from even a small airplane, Fox News reported.
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- NRC documents show that four reactors were designed to
withstand the impact of aircraft weighing up to 12,500 pounds, about 3
percent the size of the Boeing 767s that hit the World Trade Center. Only
the Three Mile Island facilities in Pennsylvania were found sufficiently
reinforced to withstand a crash by a large airliner.
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- No Improvement in Airport Security
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- The situation is no better at America's airports,
according
to a confidential Feb. 19 Transportation Department memo. The department
ran 783 tests of security at 32 airports around the country and found a
woeful lack of security.
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- Inspector General Kenneth Mead found that in more than
70 percent of tests, investigators carried knives past screeners. Screeners
failed to detect guns in 30 percent of tests and mock explosives in 60
percent. Investigators secretly boarded aircraft or got onto the tarmac
nearly half the time.
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- Tests of the security system were conducted at 32
airports
while the screening checkpoints were still mostly under the supervision
of the airline industry, with some oversight by the Federal Aviation
Administration,
Fox News reported. The new Transportation Security Administration took
over airline security Feb. 17.
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- Security administration spokesman Paul Turk said the
White House requested the investigation. "The idea was to get a
realistic
assessment of potential needs."
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- "I would say it's astounding and pretty incredible,
given the high state of security awareness we were under during that
period,"
said Reynold Hoover, a counterterrorism expert who conducts seminars on
checkpoint screening. "There really wasn't the change we thought there
was after Sept. 11."
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- Former FAA security chief Billie Vincent said the
equipment
being used cannot detect explosives or many varieties of cutting
tools.
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- "The technology at the screening points is not
there,"
Vincent said. "The current metal detectors won't do the job. If you
turn it high enough to detect that much metal, you will have an alarm on
every person going through."
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- Copyright 2002 by United Press International. All rights
reserved.
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