Pigging out.

Photo: USDA.

In the University of Illinois project, cow genes were inserted into sows to increase their milk production, and a synthetic gene was added to make milk digestion easier for the piglets, thereby causing them to grow faster. But instead of the experimental swine being destroyed, as required by the FDA, 386 piglets were sold to livestock brokers, who then sold them to slaughterhouses, who sold them to grocery stores, who sold them to consumers as pork chops, sausage, and bacon.

University officials claim the piglets did not inherit the genetic baggage of their moms, and the government does not believe the incident presented a public-health risk. But the slipup is emblematic of a federal regulatory system that is behind the times when it comes to the next phase of bioengineered food: genetically modified animals.

Over the past five years, GM soybeans and corn have become mainstays in processed food sold in the United States, despite nagging questions about the safety of the products and their potential capacity to cause ecological harm. Now, scientists, environmentalists, and food-safety advocates are concerned that GM meat, eggs, and milk could follow in the footsteps of transgenic crops, becoming a part of the U.S. diet before they have been shown to be safe for humans, animals, and the environment.

Universities and biotechnology companies are conducting experiments that mix and match genes from different organisms to produce animals that could not occur in nature: bioengineered salmon that grow five times as fast as their wild cousins, hens genetically manipulated to lay low-cholesterol eggs, cows with disease-resistant genes, chickens that produce anti-cancer drugs. Some say this work holds great promise for preventing disease, boosting agricultural productivity, and eradicating world hunger. But public-interest groups worry that in the absence of a unified regulatory system, the patchwork of outdated rules applied by different federal agencies could jeopardize food safety and the environment.

Just Say No to Drug-Style Reviews

To date, no GM animals have been approved for sale within the U.S. food industry, and it will probably be several years before genetically modified eggs, milk, and meat make their way into U.S. grocery stores and restaurants. The FDA is currently reviewing 10 applications from companies seeking to sell GM animal products to consumers — but rather than evaluating these products as food, the FDA is reviewing them under the rules that govern new drugs for animals. The agency reasons that adding a foreign substance — genes from another organism or synthetic genes — to an animal’s DNA is similar to feeding the animal a drug because it creates a physical change in the animal, such as faster growth or disease resistance.

Jane Rissler, a senior staff scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls the use of the drug rule to regulate GM animals a “contortion.” Rissler spent four years at the U.S. EPA helping to formulate biotechnology regulations before joining UCS, a Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit, in 1993. She is concerned about the use of the drug law to regulate GM animals because it “is weak on the environment and it allows zero public participation.”

A system in need of chicks and balances.

Photo: USDA.

Under the animal drug law, the FDA cannot discuss anything about the GM animal products currently being reviewed — not the names of the companies involved, the types of animals being modified, the ways their genetic structures have been altered, or the potential effects on food safety, animal health, or the environment. “We cannot reveal that type of information. It’s considered a violation of our rules,” says Linda Grassie, an FDA spokesperson. The agency will issue a report on its findings only after a product has been approved and gone on the market.

By contrast, when Procter & Gamble, the makers of Olestra, asked the FDA for permission to add its artificial fat substitute to potato chips, the controversial product was evaluated under food-additive laws. In that process, the FDA files a notice in the Federal Register and public-interest groups collect and present scientific data to the FDA in writing and at open hearings.

The secretive process now being used to review GM animals is at odds with what the American people seem to want. A 2001 survey conducted by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology indicated that people desire more information about GM food. Sixty-five percent of respondents were concerned about eating bioengineered food and 45 percent lacked confidence in the government’s ability to ensure the safety of such food.

“A large element of what people are looking for with this technology is having a process that is not only scientifically sound, but having a process that the public can trust,” says Michael Taylor, former deputy commissioner for policy at the FDA. “That transparency is an important part of public confidence in the outcome.”

Taylor was a contributing author to a 2002 National Academy of Sciences report on GM animals that noted several food-safety concerns, including allergies, digestive disorders, and antibiotic resistance. According to the report, people with weak digestive systems — such as those with gastroenteritis — could absorb whole proteins into their blood streams, potentially causing allergic reactions. Infants in particular could be threatened, because their digestive systems are not fully developed. But people with healthy digestive tracts also could be at risk: “Food products containing antimicrobial proteins might present a food safety concern in view of their potential to alter the balance of consumers’ intestinal flora, and might foster the evolution of microbial strains resistant to specific agents,” the report says.

What Price Cheap Salmon?

Many scientists also worry about the ecological effects of tinkering with the genetic structure of animals. On the bright side, some environmental problems could be mitigated by bioengineered animals, such as pigs that produce low-phosphorus poop (which would cut down on emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas) and fluorescent, color-coded fish that would indicate the presence of different water pollutants.

Something’s fishy: bioengineered catfish.

Photo: USDA.

But there is concern that GM animals, especially fish, could escape from holding pens and breed with wild populations, causing dramatic shifts in ecosystems. Scientists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., described a scenario in which fish engineered to grow faster would compete with wild fish for food and mating partners, potentially driving them to extinction. Opponents of genetic modification worry that a bioengineered salmon currently being reviewed by the FDA could cause Atlantic salmon, already listed as an endangered species, to become extinct.

“In return for possibly slightly cheaper salmon, you run the risk of wiping out wild salmon populations,” says Jean Halloran, director of the Consumer Policy Institute at Consumers Union, the New York research institute that publishes Consumer Reports. “Yeah, I guess it would be an advantage if [salmon] were cheaper, but at what price?”

Under the current rules, the FDA — not the EPA — is responsible for environmental assessments of GM animal projects; these assessments are also conducted without public input. “The FDA is absolutely not qualified to regulate the environmental risks of any animals,” Rissler says. “They are not environmental specialists.” The EPA studies the environmental risks posed by GM crops, and Rissler says the agency should also assess the potential ecological impacts of bioengineered animals, because its scientists have the expertise to ask the right questions.

The FDA insists it is qualified, even though its primary mission is not environmental regulation. “When we have expertise deficiencies in a particular area, we go out and get experts,” says John Matheson, a senior regulatory review scientist for the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. Matheson, who is an aquatic ecologist, says that in the case of the GM salmon, the FDA is working with the EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a thorough review. However, according to the National Academy of Sciences report, the FDA does not have the legal authority to deny a GM animal application based on an environmental assessment.

Just Eat It?

Until the glitch at the University of Illinois was discovered a few months ago, the FDA did not require researchers to inform them that they were conducting GM animal experiments. Nor did they make it clear to research organizations that GM animals could not be sold into the commercial food supply. In fact, the Illinois researchers were working closely with the FDA, and still did not understand the rules governing their experimental animals.

In May, the FDA sent a letter to all land-grant universities reminding researchers that their work “may require” licensing under the animal drug law. “Because much is yet to be learned about the positive and negative facets of this type of research, it is imperative that all safety regulations be followed scrupulously,” the FDA letter admonished. That seems like a reasonable request — but, as Halloran of Consumers Union puts it, “I can’t imagine how a researcher would know what the rules are, because they don’t exist in writing.”

Pork: the other genetically engineered meat.

Photo: USDA.

The agency is hoping to have voluntary guidelines for applicants completed within a year, the FDA’s Matheson says. “With animal biotech, there’s such a diversity; it’s hard to anticipate the next one to come in the door,” he says. Because the technology is new, “we’re not yet in a place to decide in stone what kind of requirements might be applied.”

Public-interest groups say it’s time for the FDA to start deciding. They’re calling on the agency to develop regulations specifically for bioengineered food products rather than trying to adapt old rules, intended for conventional food and drugs, to a radically new technology. These new regulations, they say, could spell out the roles of different federal agencies and could require applicants to follow specific testing criteria on matters such as sample sizes and duration of experiments. They also could outline a public participation process and require the labeling of products containing genetically engineered organisms — something that is not now done.

“The public is currently in the situation of not even having awareness that anyone is thinking about genetically engineering animals for human consumption,” Halloran says. “And the way the structure is currently set up, that’s going to go on until one day the FDA says, ‘We’ve just approved a genetically engineered animal and we’re not going to label it. So, here it is; eat it.’”

Sure, climate change activism — conserving energy, using renewable fuels, and constructing eco-friendly buildings — isn’t as sexy as marching against Vietnam or burning bras. But in an increasingly warm world, working to reverse global climate change may be the next major social movement on American college campuses. While the U.S. government snubs the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, a small but growing number of colleges and universities are weaning themselves from carbon and adopting new attitudes about energy.

While the U.S. government snubs the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, a small but growing number of colleges and universities are weaning themselves from carbon and adopting new attitudes about energy.

“If you look at social movements in this country, they’ve never been led by government,” says William Moomaw, senior director of the Tufts Institute of the Environment and a professor of international environmental policy. “It was true of slavery, the women’s vote, civil rights, the Vietnam War. I think it will be true of addressing climate change.”

A recent survey by the National Wildlife Federation found that 80 percent of American colleges are trying to conserve energy, and half have developed efficiency codes. Nearly a quarter use some form of renewable energy, and 12 percent power at least some of their vehicles with alternative fuel.

Tufts love: a Toyota Prius on campus.

Photo: Tufts Climate Initiative.

Some of the change is coming from the top. Both the president of Tufts and a senior vice president at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., have pledged to slice carbon emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 — the goal established for the U.S. by Kyoto. And a consortium of all 56 colleges and universities in New Jersey has promised to cut greenhouse gas releases by 3.5 percent below 1990 levels by 2005. In Pennsylvania, 25 campuses have pledged to collectively buy some green energy, including wind power, and to ultimately reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

On other campuses, students are leading the charge. A student organization called Kyoto Now! is active at 36 schools, urging administrations to slash carbon releases in accordance with the Kyoto treaty. Undergraduates at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon overwhelmingly voted to increase student fees to raise the money for sufficient carbon credits to make the school Kyoto-compliant, without the support of the Board of Trustees.

At Oberlin College in Ohio, students and faculty will ask the Board of Trustees this fall to adopt a carbon-neutrality policy that would go far beyond Kyoto. The policy would commit the campus to powering itself without producing any carbon emissions by 2020, through buying green energy or producing its own. “Most of the conversation has been about being Kyoto-compliant, but everybody knows that will not solve the problems. It’s a very small bite out of a very big meal,” says David Orr, professor of environmental studies at Oberlin.

Demonstration Plots

While most colleges practice at least some energy conservation, only a small fraction of the nation’s schools have committed to major carbon reductions. “You have isolated champions around the country who are committed, and some are even [college] presidents, but not enough. There is not yet a critical mass,” says Wynn Calder, associate director of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that lobbies for progressive environmental policies in higher education.

But these pioneer institutions will eventually lead other schools down the same path, says Don Wheeler, past president of the New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability. “Solar, wind, fuel cells, geothermal — those are all things campuses should be taking a lead on,” he says. “By turning our schools into demonstration cases, [the clean energy movement] will move forward.”

Not the conservatory: Oberlin’s
environmental studies building.

Photo: Oberlin College.

Oberlin exemplifies the practice of turning schools into demonstrations of clean energy: The school’s new environmental studies building is a model of green architecture and engineering. Because of its design, it uses one-sixth the energy of a conventional new classroom building. The solar complex currently generates 54 percent of the energy used in the building, and eventually will become a net exporter of electricity. The center opened in 2000, but is still, essentially, under construction, Orr says. “Our intention is to guide the building through a series of steps until it becomes radically efficient.”

Tufts, the University of Michigan, Lewis & Clark, and Stanford University are also planning to build new high-performance buildings and to green older dorms and classrooms. Other schools are taking smaller steps such as using only locally grown lumber for construction, which means gas-guzzling trucks don’t have to haul timber across the country.

Meanwhile, students in disciplines ranging from engineering and environmental science to architecture and economics are getting hands-on experience with these new building technologies. “We definitely have an interdisciplinary approach,” says Sarah Hammond Creighton, project manager of the Tufts Climate Initiative. “It’s not all about engineering. It’s about behavioral science, environmental policies, finance.”

Integrating practical questions about global warming into many different academic disciplines is one of the goals of the initiative. “If you’re going to teach economics, why not do a cost-benefit analysis on something interesting, like setting up different heating systems at the university or different ways of managing the grounds without so much machinery?” Moomaw asks. He says an interdisciplinary approach to climate change “can enhance the mission of the university, provide research opportunities, and even help the financial operations of the university.”

And energy conservation does save money. The State University of New York at Buffalo is saving an estimated $9 million annually because it has installed more efficient lighting and ventilation systems and is encouraging students and faculty to turn off their lights and computers. Those savings can help to offset more expensive green projects that may take longer to pay for themselves.

But getting students to care about global warming enough to change their behavior is one of the biggest challenges that universities face. A Gallup poll conducted in 2000 for the Institute for Global Ethics shows that while 80 percent of students believe the environment is already deteriorating, not nearly as many are active in the environmental movement. At Tufts, student “eco-representatives” try to get their classmates interested in conservation by holding “Do it in the dark!” contests and papering bathroom stalls with global warming trivia.

“For many, environmentalism is recycling your newspapers and cans. But when it comes time to buy that Ford Excursion, that resolve goes right out the door because people don’t think about it,” says Ted Shevlin, a Tufts eco-rep. “Getting people to consider the impacts of their actions is the most important, and most difficult, part of this job.”

Despite the mounting concern about nuclear power plant security after Sept. 11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn’t shown much inclination to toughen safety standards. Instead, the NRC is considering replacing its own inspection program with an initiative, favored by the nuclear industry, that would allow utilities to design, administer and grade their own security tests, with far less NRC input.

For more than three years, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the atomic power industry, has been pressuring the NRC to scrap its security inspections, because preparing for the drills and correcting problems is costly. In 1998, NRC managers acquiesced and killed the security evaluation program, but it was quickly reinstated on orders from the Clinton administration. A month later, NRC managers submitted a plan for a pilot project that would allow plant managers to evaluate their own security forces. Depending on the commission’s satisfaction with the one-year pilot program — which was supposed to begin last fall — the industry drills could eventually replace the NRC-administered program. “We’re not saying the NRC shouldn’t have oversight,” said Doug Walters, a senior licensing manager at the NEI. “The oversight should be on how well we assess ourselves.”

But Capt. David Orrik, a former Navy Seal who now heads the NRC’s security inspection program, said there is no way to guarantee utilities will not teach to the test. “When we go in, they don’t know where the adversary will attack from, what target sets they’re going for, what tactics they’re going to use,” he said. Under the industry plan, NRC security specialists will observe a test that has been planned and executed by the utility. “The way it’s set up, I have severe misgivings about our ability to determine how effective it is,” Orrik said.

NRC Chair Richard Meserve.

Photo: NRC.

After Sept. 11, NRC Chair Richard Meserve said the agency would reconsider whether it is appropriate to allow utilities to write and grade their own security tests. But an internal memo sent to NRC staff by management on Oct. 19 indicates that the industry-backed pilot program will go forward as planned as soon as security drills are reinstated.

The Nuclear Security Act of 2001, introduced by Democratic legislators in the Senate and House, would require the NRC, not the industry, to evaluate plant security. In addition, the legislation calls for tests every other year instead of every eight years, and utilities that failed the drill would be tested again every six months until they passed. The legislation would also give the NRC 18 months to write new rules about where guards, gates, and other vehicle barriers must be located at each of the nation’s atomic plants, “taking into account the events of Sept. 11.”

The Surly Gates

In a letter sent to President Bush on Dec. 7, the president of the Nuclear Energy Institute argued that America’s atomic power plants are “surrounded by perimeter defenses that rival those of military installations.” He did not mention that two hours after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, guards at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania were still struggling to close a gate that is supposed to stop terrorists from entering. Nor did he note that there were no guards or gates at most plant entrances across the country before Sept. 11. Since then, at least a dozen states have asked the National Guard to stand watch outside nuclear plants to check IDs and search incoming vehicles for weapons and explosives.

Three Mile Island in 1979.

Photo: U.S. EPA.

But after the National Guard leaves, many residents worry that plant entrances will again be vulnerable. “My concern is if a truck carrying a bomb gets on Three Mile Island, it can do a lot of damage,” said Scott Portzline, an activist with Three Miles Island Alert who lives in Harrisburg, Pa., 10 miles from the plant. “It can go through an unescorted entrance and get to some specific, vital places within 30 seconds.”

On Sept. 12, Three Mile Island Alert filed a petition asking the NRC to require armed guards at plant entrances to act as a physical and visual deterrent to would-be terrorists. “Without an NRC requirement, many licensees will not volunteer this protection because of generic cost-cutting measures taken over the past few years to remain competitive in a deregulated utility market,” Portzline wrote in the petition. “Three Mile Island’s entrance is less protected now than at any time in history.”

Adding guards at the front doors of plants would be “a relatively inexpensive protection,” the petition said. Adding reinforced gates at the entrances of all the plants in the country would be far more costly, but something that watchdog organizations say is necessary.

Who Makes the Rules?

What about security measures beyond the front gates? After years of denying petitions by citizens groups, the NRC finally issued rules in 1994 that require utilities to install vehicle barriers around buildings that contain vital safety equipment. Heavy hydraulic gates, “nuclear grade” lifting gates, and fences reinforced with concrete and chain posts keep unauthorized vehicles away from protected areas. The NRC reluctantly imposed these rules after a former mental patient crashed his station wagon into the turbine building at Three Mile Island in 1993. Nineteen days later, a rental van packed with ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel exploded in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center, killing six people. Four days after that, the New York Times received a letter warning that 150 suicidal soldiers “will continue to execute our missions against military and civilian targets” in the United States, including “some potential nuclear targets.”

At an NRC meeting held later that spring, NRC commissioners discussed whether the rules should be changed to require gates and fences around vital equipment. Citing the high costs involved, Ivan Selin, then chair of the commission, said plants should be asked to “do what they can reasonably do, without going to a rule.” Commissioner James Curtiss, who later became a lobbyist for the nuclear industry, objected to any new rules, saying if the NRC required protection against truck bombs, “people will come forward and seek protection against air bombs”

Ultimately the NRC adopted a rule requiring plants to install gates and fences that would keep out a 4×4 truck loaded with explosives. But after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, citizen groups asked the NRC if the barriers were far enough from vital equipment to prevent damage from a large truck bomb. “We kept asking, would your truck bomb rule protect against a bomb Oklahoma City-size?” said Daniel Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Los Angeles nuclear watchdog group. “The answer was pretty clearly no.”

Spent nuclear fuel pool.

Photo: DOE.

The NRC has also rejected requests by citizens groups that want utilities to reinforce buildings containing radioactive waste. Used nuclear fuel rods that were supposed to be shipped to a permanent repository by 1998 remain in pools of borated water at nuclear plants across the country. Prefabricated, industrial buildings are all that shelter the fuel pools, which are located either slightly below ground or in structures as tall as seven stories.

In a 1995 petition, the Washington, D.C.-based National Whistleblower Center argued that an airplane or missile could easily penetrate a spent fuel building and potentially crack the concrete wall or floor of the pool. Without water to cool it, radioactive fuel would overheat and either melt or catch fire, endangering the lives of thousands of people within a 50-mile radius, according to an NRC study. Nonetheless, the agency denied the petition, saying it could not require reinforcement of spent fuel buildings since it does not mandate that reactors or other equipment buildings be protected against aerial attack.

The legislation introduced in the House and Senate would give the NRC three months to write new rules to better protect plants against an aerial attack on reactors, equipment buildings, and spent fuel pools. This could mean imposing a permanent no-fly zone around nuclear plants or requiring utilities to fortify protective buildings. Some groups have called for the military to install weapons atop reactors that could shoot down incoming planes.

But nuclear utilities say they should not be required to protect against enemies of the state, nor should they have to pay for measures they believe are excessive. The Nuclear Security Act would require plants to pay for federal guards, increased NRC security testing, and more physical barriers. “I don’t think this is economic-driven opposition,” Mitch Singer of the Nuclear Energy Institute said. “It is the industry’s position that the way the system is set up now is pretty good.”

Industry critics say utility lobbyists are following the same pattern they have for years — denying the existence of a problem while delaying the rulemaking process to save money on security. It’s the same approach the airline industry used to stall tougher security measures on airplanes and in airports, said Edwin Lyman, scientific director of the D.C.-based Nuclear Control Institute, an anti-nuclear group. “It’s exactly the same at nuclear plants,” he said. “The industry is involved heavily in trying to shape things the way they want them. Things slow to a crawl, and meanwhile, the vulnerability is still there.”

Back to Part One: How secure are U.S. nuclear power plants?

Before last fall’s terrorist attacks, utilities submitted fingerprints of job applicants to the FBI for criminal background checks — but the FBI didn’t cross-reference the names with its list of known terrorists. Now, “everybody working at plants or who has ever worked at the plants,” has been checked against the FBI list, said Alan Madison, chief of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safeguards section.

But utilities still are granting temporary clearances to new employees while the FBI completes background checks. To receive provisional access, new hires are only required to present photo ID, pass a credit check, provide a character reference and five-year job history, and take a psychological test. Before Sept. 11, even gun-carrying security guards were allowed temporary clearances, as were janitors, vendors who stock soda and candy machines, engineers, and control room operators. The Union of Concerned Scientists discovered a number of cases in which new employees who had worked inside the plant more than a month were dismissed when the FBI returned details about their criminal history.

Now, new employees awaiting FBI clearance are not allowed in vital areas — places with back-up pumps, generators, and power supply boxes, Madison said. “If their talents are required for essential activities,” they are allowed into such areas, but only when accompanied by another plant employee. The Union of Concerned Scientists says even long-time employees should not be allowed into vital areas alone. A two-person rule, which is used in the military, would eliminate the opportunity for a single employee to sabotage equipment, Lochbaum said.

Several citizen groups, including UCS, have called on the NRC to periodically re-screen all employees, something that was recommended by an NRC advisory committee two decades ago. “Some workers can and do develop criminal records after gaining unescorted privileges at nuclear facilities,” Lochbaum said.

The NRC requires that supervisors monitor employees for drug and alcohol use and for mental stability. But staff cuts at nuclear utilities nationwide — the result of competition in the electricity market — mean there are fewer supervisors to monitor employees. Barry Quigley, a reactor operator at an Illinois nuclear plant, said most supervisors don’t have time to observe employee behavior, and many employees work without supervision.

Quigley also said managers are not trained to detect patterns of unstable behavior. For example, at one plant, the only training question that supervisors must answer about mental stability is: “Is a person sitting on the floor crying an example of aberrant behavior?”

“We may never know,” Quigley said, “but I doubt that the 19 bastards [who hijacked the planes] spent much time sitting on the floor crying before Sept. 11.”

Yet many people — and especially people in the small town of Buchanan, N.Y., where the power station is located — still worry that terrorists could turn Indian Point into a nuclear bomb, with devastating consequences for New York City and surrounding areas. That fear is not unfounded. Since the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11, the U.S. government has given several indications of credible threats to the nation’s nuclear power plants. For example, on Jan. 23, U.S. intelligence agencies issued an internal alert about a planned attack on a nuclear power plant by Islamic terrorists; six days later, President Bush revealed in his State of the Union address that diagrams of U.S. nuclear plants were found at terrorist bases in Afghanistan.

Feeling insecure?

Although fears — and warnings — that terrorists might attack nuclear facilities have intensified since Sept. 11, they are hardly new. Critics say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has done little over the years to enhance security at nuclear plants, many of which are located within 50 miles of metropolitan areas. Instead, in the past few years, the nation’s 103 commercial nuclear reactors have been cutting expenses, including security costs, to compete in the new world of electricity deregulation.

At the same time, the nuclear industry is enjoying enthusiastic White House support. Nuclear energy currently supplies about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, but the Bush administration would like to see that number increase dramatically. The Department of Energy has proposed streamlining the approval process for new nuclear power plants and Bush’s 2003 budget includes funds to match private-sector spending on new plant development. “It is in our nation’s national interest that we develop more energy supplies at home,” Bush told business leaders in late October. “It is in our national interest that we look at safe nuclear power.”

Those Other Twin Towers

But can nuclear plants be made safe from terrorism? There are no rules requiring atomic plants or waste facilities to be secured against large truck bombs or air attacks — the M.O.s of the Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Indian Point’s twin reactors.

Photo: Entergy Nuclear.

“If the American Airlines jet that traveled down the Hudson Valley en route to the Twin Towers had instead banked a left turn into one of Indian Point’s twin reactors, the resulting disaster would have been even more horrific than the World Trade Center catastrophe,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., lead attorney for Riverkeeper, one of several environmental groups asking the NRC to close Indian Point. Because of the prevailing southerly winds in the Hudson Valley, a meltdown or major radioactive release at Indian Point “could result in death and chronic radiation sickness for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of the region’s citizens and render much of the New York metropolitan area permanently uninhabitable,” Kennedy said in a press statement.

A 1982 study commissioned by the NRC offers some more specific numbers. According to the study, a worst-case-scenario meltdown at Indian Point 3, one of the plants three reactors, would result in up to 50,000 non-cancer radiation deaths, up to 14,000 cancer deaths, and up to 167,000 cases of radiation-related health problems. A 1997 report for the NRC concluded that a severe release from a nuclear waste storage pool could cause as many as 143,000 deaths and $566 billion in damage, in addition to rendering 2,790 square miles of land uninhabitable. The NRC has never studied how much radiation could be released if an airplane-turned-bomb sparked a jet-fuel fire in a reactor core or nuclear waste storage facility. If firefighters were unable to put out the blaze for several days — as was the case when the graphite core at Chernobyl burned in the Ukraine — much more radiation could be released.

Costs of Cutting Costs

The U.S. nuclear industry claims that both the probability of a successful attack and the scope of the resulting devastation are exaggerated by environmentalists who want to hobble the resurgent atomic sector. Nuclear plants are built with layers of backup safety systems, making it difficult to actually break enough equipment to cause a radioactive release. Reactors in the United States are encased in 180-foot-tall concrete vessels with steel-lined walls that are at least three feet thick. “In security parlance, they are hardened targets,” said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the atomic power industry. “They are not going to be the ones terrorists go after because [a successful attack] would be too difficult.”

But given that the unthinkable has already happened once, calm assurances from nuclear-energy advocates don’t set everyone’s mind at ease. Critics say nuclear plants cannot compete with low-cost coal and natural gas fuels without cutting costs, including security expenses. And they are skeptical that the NRC will require tougher security unless Congress mandates it. After Sept. 11, the NRC announced a “top-to-bottom review” of its security requirements, but the nuclear industry has been lobbying the agency to move slowly on implementing any new rules. Days after the deadliest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, a high-level NRC manager reportedly said nuclear power plants should be allowed to return to normal security levels because of the high cost to utilities. The agency continues to “recommend” that nuclear plants remain on high alert because of FBI concerns about another domestic terrorist attack. But NRC Chair Richard Meserve confirmed in the trade journal Inside NRC that industry lobbyists have made “entreaties” to some NRC staffers to “adjust the security levels downward.” (Singer of the Nuclear Energy Institute denied the group has “made any specific requests to lower security.”)

“The majority of [NRC] managers — even some of the commission — think we’re overreacting in the security area, even now,” said one NRC senior staffer. “The feedback we got from high up in the federal government after Sept. 11 was there are two agencies in the federal government that just don’t get it. One was the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], and the other was the NRC.”

Guard Doody

Given these attitudes, it’s not surprising that the nuclear power industry and the NRC are trying to kill legislation that would federalize guards at nuclear power plants and impose strict and expensive security regulations on nuclear utilities. The Nuclear Energy Institute, which has given at least $444,000 to Republicans and $171,000 to Democrats in the last five years, is leading the campaign against bills that would make security guards federal employees. In November, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) introduced the Nuclear Security Act of 2001. Democratic Reps. Ed Markey (Mass.) and Nita Lowey (N.Y.) proposed similar legislation in the House.

Time to get off the fence.

In response, Joe Colvin, NEI’s president and chief executive officer, called the legislative proposals “a reflexive political response to a problem that does not exist, given the fact that nuclear power plants are private facilities protected by a paramilitary force of highly trained, well-armed dedicated professionals.” NRC Chair Meserve said creating a federal guard force would require hiring 7,000 new government employees to “address a nonexistent problem. … There have been no failures in nuclear plant security of the type that has plagued the commercial airline industry and thus no need for such radical change.”

It’s true that as yet there have been no major failures in nuclear plant security in the U.S., but in security drills conducted by federal regulators, nuclear power plants and airlines have fared equally poorly. Nearly 50 percent of nuclear plants in the country have failed NRC security drills during the past decade — even when guards had at least six months to prepare and knew the day and time the mock terrorists were attacking. Out of the 57 plants tested in “force-on-force” drills by the NRC between 1991 and 1998, 27 showed “significant” weaknesses, meaning a real attack could have resulted in a partial or complete meltdown of the reactor core. In 14 cases, radiation could have been released into the atmosphere.

Advocates of federalizing security forces at nuclear plants say uniform hiring practices would improve safety standards. Currently, these security forces vary from site to site in training, skills, pay, and size. At some plants, guards must run an obstacle course within a time limit with more than 100 pounds on their backs. At other plants, guards simply must be able to climb one flight of stairs — without a time limit.

“There’s big disparities between plants where you have Marine-type training programs and ones where you just have to be alive,” said Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Federalization would at least require some standardization over educational and physical requirements.” In addition, Lochbaum said some guards make as little as $9 an hour. “At the money they’re paying, the only people they get are people that don’t get the jobs as greeters at Wal Mart,” he said.

Federal rules require that at least 10 guards are on duty at all times at nuclear plants. But the NRC makes exceptions, allowing as few as five guards if plants install barriers, block doors, and take other defensive measures. “If you only have five responders and you’re trying to cover four sides of a plant, that’s going to be tough,” said one NRC senior security staffer. “So numbers do count.”

One reason for the relaxed staffing standards is that guards are only required to defend against a team of three invaders and one insider in NRC drills. The Nuclear Security Act of 2001 would require guards to repel up to 20 attackers working in multiple teams with the active assistance of several plant employees. Rep. Markey said, “The reality is they could come in large numbers, they could be suicidal, they could have sophisticated technical backgrounds, and they could have much greater insider help than previously anticipated.”

Part Two: U.S. nuclear power plants fail the test