Edited by
Paul Leventhal Yonah Alexander
A Nuclear Control Institute Book in cooperation with the Institute for Studies in International Terrorism State University of New York
Lexington Books
D C Heath and Company/Lexington, Massachusetts/Toronto
The Members of the International Task Force on Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism
- Cochairmen;
- Rear Admiral Thomas Davies, USN (Ret), former assistant director for nonproliferation. U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
- Bernard O'Keefe, chairman, executive committee, EG&G. Inc.
- Executive Vice-Chairman:
- Paul Leventhal, president. Nuclear Control Institute
- Members:
- Harold Agnew, former director, Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Yonah Alexander, director, Institute for Studies in International Terrorism. State University of New York
- George Bunn, Stockton Professor of International Law, U.S. Naval War College
- Donald De Vito, director. New York State Emergency Management Office
- Bernard Feld, professor of physics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- David Fischer, former assistant director-general for external relations International Atomic Energy Agency
- Victor Gilinky, former commissioner, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Reinosuke Hara, executive vice-president, Seiko Instrument & Electronics. Ltd. Japan
- Enrico Jacchia, former director of EURATOM Safeguards, European Economic Community
- Harald Müller, executive director, New approaches to Non-Proliferation: A European Approach. Centre for European Policy Studies. Brussels: research fellow, Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt. Yuval Ne'eman, director, Sackler Institute, Tel Aviv University, Israel: former Israeli minister of science and technology
- Jerrold Post. director, Behavioral Sciences, Defense Systems, Inc.
- John Redick. Program officer, W Alton Jones Foundation
- Mohamed Shaker, deputy permanent representative of Egypt to the United nations: president, 1985 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
- Claire Sterling, journalist
- Shuzaburo Takeda. professor engineering. Tokai University, Japan
- Kenneth Taylor vice president government affairs Nabisco Brands Inc.; former Canadian ambassador to Iran
- Theodore Taylor. former deputy director (scientific) U.S. Defense Atomic Support Agency
- Inga Thorsson, former Swedish under secretary of state for disarmament; president 1975 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
- Stansfield Turner, former director of central intelligence
- Merrill Walters. director Nuclear Planning Group, NATO, Brussels
- Mason Wilirich. senior vice-president. Pacific Gas & Electric Company
- Bertram Wolfe, vice president and general manager. Nuclear Fuel and Special Projects Division, General Electric Company
iii. Protecting Nuclear Facilities
1. Denial of access to nuclear facilities should be the basic consideration in protecting against sabotage. Because of the extensive damage terrorists could do once they gain entry to a nuclear installation, denial of access should be the sine qua non of protection against nuclear terrorism. Even if a response force arrives only a few minutes after terrorists gain entry, It could be too late to prevent sabotage with severe consequences.
2. Thorough vigilance against the insider threat is needed Security staffs at nuclear facilities should be alert to the crucial role insiders can play in overcoming defenses against terrorists. Access to vital areas of facilities should be restricted to the extent possible without compromising safety -- that is, without inhibiting access to such areas during an emergency. The reliability of employees at nuclear facilities should be a matter of prime concern, although security measures against the insider threat will necessarily vary according to the laws and traditions of individual nations. Rigorous assessments of potential employees by such means as psychological screening and background checks, and regular monitoring of employees' reliability, should be carried our according to professional standards with due regard to rights of privacy and free expression.
3. Guard forces should be thoroughly trained and authorized to use deadly force Guard forces and nearby reserve forces should be provided with high quality and frequently updated training against the terrorist threat. They should be advised as to the appropriate use of deadly force to ensure responses sufficient to prevent a large sophisticated group of attackers or a few infiltrators from gaining entry to nuclear facilities.
4. The basis used for designing physical protection of nuclear plants should be reviewed to ensure that it accurately reflects the current threat. Because a number of insiders and a team of outsiders can be instrumental in assuring the success of diversion or theft of materials or sabotage of a facility by terrorists, the threat against which physical protection systems are designed (the so-called "design-basis threat") should be reevaluated and upgraded when circumstances warrant.
5. Power reactors should be protected against vehicular threats The size of exclusion zones at nuclear power reactor sites should be reexamined to ensure that the zones are large enough to neutralize the possible catastrophic consequences of a truck bomb set off at the perimeter fence. All reactor sites should be modified promptly with barriers to shield critical areas of the plant against potential consequences of truck bombs set off on-site. This may require revising the design-basis threat to include protection against vehicular access - a requirement not included in U.S. licensing regulations, for example.
6. Research reactors should have adequate security provisions against terrorists Existing research reactors at universities and elsewhere should be reevaluated for the purpose of creating exclusion zones and installing improved security measures to protect against the consequences of potential sabotage by terrorists.
7. Reactor safety designs should be reexamined to protect against an accident caused by terrorist. As parrot the worldwide reexamination of nuclear safety in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, there should be a reevaluation of the contribution of sabotage to the risks and consequences of a severe reactor accident. Thee findings should be incorporated into national and international reactor safety standards. Due consideration should be given to installation, at least in highly populated areas, of improved safety systems designed to be resistant to terrorist attack. In addition, information should be widely shared on now technologies for safety systems that prevent tampering with controls.
8. IAEA physical protection guidelines should be reviewed and updated. Similarly, the IAEA 's physical-security guidelines, which were published in 1 97, should be reviewed with a view to assuring that they deal with the current terrorist threat, and the new protective standards should be implemented at civil facilities worldwide.
9. Protection standards should be spelled out unambiguously. These and other protective standards should be spelled out in detail at the highest administrative levels to ensure unambiguous implementation at each facility.
Background. Protection at nuclear facilities varies from country to country and often from facility to facility. Most physical protection programs originally were modeled after those used in the United States on the basis of US. requirements governing transfers abroad of technology, equipment, and materials for nuclear power and research programs. Thc United States continues to visit some foreign facilities where US-supplied nuclear materials arc stored and used. Based on what is publicly known about U.S. and other nuclear programs, defenses against attack from the outside and against the insider threat may not yet be sufficient. The discussion that follows emphasizes the U.S. experience, but the observations generally apply to physical protection in other countries as well.
Containment structures at nuclear powerplants are formidable, but they could be overcome or bypassed by terrorists, depending on the degree of determination and sophistication of the attackers and on whether the attackers have managed to compromise employees on the inside. Although truck bombs arc unlikely to break containment structures, they can cause sufficient damage to essential systems to lead possibly to radioactive releases in the event of a core melt Most research and production reactors have less extensive containment systems than power reactors. The designs of these reactors should be reexamined to determine whether containments, or safety features that compensate for the absence of a containment, should be added. An additional problem is that most research reactors do not have exclusion zones and are not otherwise protected against truck bombs. Many of them are located on university campuses where security is generally light.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the ITS. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have developed threat models against which physical protection systems have been designed. There are several problems with these models, however The models were designed a decade ago when the threat of nuclear terrorism was thought to be mostly from antinuclear protesters. Today's wider range of threats is not covered by the models. For example, the NRCs "design basis threat does not require protection at a reactor against more than one insider working with "several" outsiders. And there is a need to make sufficient use of background checks of security forces and maintenance personnel, who could be key to a successful terrorist operation.
The DOE has its own protective system criteria, but security standards vary, and field offices are often left to their own interpretations. In some cases, a lack of agreement on threat characteristics can result in an ineffective system against certain classes of intruders; vet that system will still be within published security guidelines.
A 1984 congressional investigation of specific instances of physical security problems at U.S. nuclear weapon facilities disclosed "nuclear test devices highly vulnerable to theft": attitudinal problems and administrators who have covered up security problems: guard forces with less than a 1 percent chance of interrupting an attacking force; "major deficiencies" in the management of the physical protection program; and, in the words of the chairman of the investigating committee, evidence that key officials "had put this nation's national security and public health and safety in serious jeopardy" Substantial improvements in physical protection have been made at these facilities since the disclosures were made.
While the Department of Defense (DOD) has developed equipment to provide electronic detection of an adversary force well before it reaches the perimeter fence of its nuclear weapon installations, there is no requirement at the Department of Energy nuclear-weapon facilities other than for detection by humans beyond the perimeter fence. Consideration should be given to use of DOD research and equipment, such as foliage-penetrating radar.
In addition, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not required protection against the truck-bomb threat. Nor has it required, at least in areas of high-population density, the backfitting of reactors with new safety features that arc designed to be resistant to terrorist attack. For example, there is a bunkered emergency core cooling system that is designed to ensure flooding of a reactor core with cooling water even if terrorists, with the aid of insiders, take over a control room and attempt to cause a core meltdown. The system, now being used in West Germany, Switzerland, and other West European countries, goes into operation automatically and can be overridden only from controls within a penetration-resistant bunker isolated from the rest of the plant. The cost's and benefits of such an approach need to be considered as a means of protecting against terrorists. Finally, NRC regulations that are intended not to require utilities to provide protection of their nuclear facilities in time of war against "enemies... whether a foreign government or other person" need to be reexamined to make clear that protection against terrorists in peacetime situations is required, at least for plants near highly populated areas.
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