Nuclear Terrorism
Sabotage and Terrorism of Nuclear Power Plants

The NRC has known about this problem since 1975 when a systems analyst wrote a now classified report on using publicly available documents to plan an act sabotage. Up until that time, the NRC had not taken the sabotage issue seriously. The author described scenarios where a saboteur wouldn't need sophisticated tools or explosives. He says that he included only common tools found at any hardware store to write the report. He even used things like popsicle sticks. "A janitor could be trained to do it. And there are things he could do to be sure it's irreversible," he said at a Sandia National Laboratories safety conference when he presented the report 20 years ago. The author does not now have a copy of his report. Every once in a while he checks to see if it is still classified. He wants a copy if it becomes available.

At the time when he made this statement, he believed that it was easy to sabotage a plant. Now he realizes that it's even easier than he first thought. He said that he dreams up other clever ways from time to time. In fact, the Sandia National Laboratories have concluded that "there is still virtually no protection from sabotage acts of an insider."

The Union of Concerned Scientists knows of more than 120 acts of sabotage at US nuclear plants. Most of these acts were perpetrated by disgruntled workers at every level of employment including control room operators and security guards. Employees have cut electrical cables, dumped chemicals into fuel pools and water systems, set fires, drilled holes in equipment, smashed security cameras, sabotaged diesel generators and committed numerous other offenses. The NRC has a "two-man" rule which is supposed to prevent sabotage by permitting entrance into vital areas only if accompanied by a co-worker. But, not all of the plants follow these rules to the letter.

Forty days after the accident at Three Mile Island, control room operators at the Surry plant in Virginia poured sodium hydroxide onto new fuel assemblies. The fuel was stored in an area which was locked and alarmed. The NRC notified other plants that the FBI was on-site conducting an extensive investigation. They also warned that this incident "could possibly provoke similar behavior on the part of other persons."

During labor negotiations at the Salem plant in New Jersey, someone intentionally tripped a steam generator feedwater pump. To a small degree, this event imitated the Three Mile Island trip which led to the accident three years prior.

In 1981 a major portion of the emergency core cooling system was disabled at the Beaver Valley nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Someone sabotaged the emergency diesel generators at the Nine Mile Point reactor in New York the same year.

On January 3, 1961 a love triangle apparently got in the way of research at an experimental reactor in Idaho with a grizzly display of destruction. Three men were at work on top of the reactor. One of the workers intentionally caused a damaging condition known as a power excursion by withdrawing a control rod too far. The nuclear reaction rapidly increased and the resulting steam explosion destroyed the reactor, killing the saboteur and the two other workers. At first only two bodies could be found. The other body was impaled by a control rod through the groin, out the shoulder and pinned to the roof. The dead men were highly contaminated and could not receive a normal funeral and burial. This event was classified a murder/suicide.

MORE MISCHIEF

There have been numerous events at US plants that raise concerns. Safeguarded documents including portions of security plans stored on computer disks have disappeared. The Millstone plant in Connecticut has lost security documents on numerous occasions in what may have been an organized effort to steal the entire plan. After each incident, the licensee claimed that there was no significant damage to security.

Security guards have attempted or committed suicide at several plants. A document control worker was murdered at the Catawba plant in South Carolina. A recent "Unsolved Mysteries" television program asked for any information about a suspicious death at a uranium processing plant in Fernald Ohio. A worker may have been murdered by incineration in what the show called a nuclear furnace.

At the Turkey Point plant in Florida, a security guard accidentally discharged his gun. The bullet pierced his truck. Realizing that this would result in his dismissal, he attempted to cover-up the accident by faking a shoot-out. He told his superiors that while patrolling the shoreline, he stumbled upon drug dealers in boats. To help his story along, he shot more holes in the truck.

At the Comanche Peak plant in Texas, a security officer was found bound, gagged and unconscious on the roof of a fire protection building. Her weapon lay 25 feet away. The investigation has not yet been closed because this incident may have also been faked.

Central alarm station wires were cut at the South Texas plant by an employee who was about to be laid off. A firewatch employee at Braidwood Illinois vandalized wires and fire proofing. Someone tampered with a fire protection valve at the Clinton plant also located in Illinois.

MILITARY

Operation Desert Storm forces destroyed Iraq's experimental reactor to slow down Saddam's supposedly secret nuclear program. But, this wasn't the first time that Iraq has lost a reactor at the hands of another government. One week after the March 28, 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island (fuel melted twice), a reactor under manufacture in France for Iraq was destroyed by powerful explosives. The Mossad was responsible for this 3:00 a.m. clandestine operation where the saboteurs were able to elude multiple security guards. To conceal their involvement, the Mossad made bogus calls to the media claiming to be French ecologists who were trying to "save the world from future Harrisburgs." French bomb investigators proclaimed from the beginning that the three blasts looked like the work of "well-organized professionals." The Mossad should have invented a better cover story than blaming environmentalists; after all, how many "tree huggers" had plastic explosives in 1979?

In 1985, four North Korean commandos were killed by a South Korean naval patrol when they attempted to come ashore near a nuclear power plant. At the Koeberg plant near Cape Town South Africa, guerrillas penetrated the heavily guarded plant and damaged the control room. Plants in Spain and Argentina have also experienced control room takeovers. The French Super Phenix (sic) plant fell under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles. (Plants built in the United States are not designed to withstand this type of an attack.) Fortunately, all of these plants were non-operational when the assaults occurred.

$10,000 Reward

A security guard employed by the Wackenhut Corporation at the Indain Point Nuclear plant near New York City (Wackenhut also guards TMI) was fired when he was asked to work his sixth straight day of 12 hour shifts.

The guard stated to Wackenhut in writing that it would be ``physically and mentally exhausting,'' that he was fully aware of his condition, and that he ``would not want to be negligent in performing [his] duties as a security officer.''

Nuclear plants have formal policy and written procedures for factors that could render plant workers unfit for duty - - "fatigue" is specifically mentioned in the code of federal regulations.
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TMI Alert Chairman Eric Epstein says terrorism could happen at Three Mile Island Windows Streaming Video

"We should expect conflicts in which adversaries, because of cultural affinities different from our own, will resort to forms and levels of violence shocking to our sensibilities." The United States Commission on National Security / 21st Century September 15, 1999

Favorite Links

Three Mile Island Alert
Lost and Stolen Nuclear Materials in the United States
The Nuclear Control Institute
Terrorism of Nuclear Waste Shipments
The Nuke Next Door
Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRSNET)
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Todd's Atomic Home Page
U.S. Intelligence Community
The Center for Defense Information
IAEA: International Atomic Energy Organization
WISE
U.S. : Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Canada: Atomic Energy Control Board
Rocky Flats Grand Jury Secret Report