Global Beat Syndicate: Protecting Our Vulnerable Nuclear Power Plants

By George Bunn

STANFORD--In his State of the Union address January 29th, President George W. Bush reported that in Afghanistan,"We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities."

On September 11, the need for international standards to protect nuclear facilities was strikingly apparent. If one of those fuel-laden jetliners had been flown into a nuclear reactor, causing a meltdown and dispersing radioactive material to a nearby population, the long-term death toll could have been staggering. A 1981 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) environmental impact statement estimated that a"worst-case" disaster, perhaps caused by a large truck bomb attack on a nuclear reactor or its spent fuel storage area, could produce 130,000 fatalities in a nearby heavily populated area.

The United States and the international community can no longer postpone taking stronger measures to protect nuclear facilities and nuclear material. Weapons-usable material must be kept out of the hands of states and terrorists trying to make nuclear weapons, and nuclear reactors and spent fuel must be protected from attack or sabotage.

The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have begun to take the lead in persuading the many countries with nuclear facilities to protect their nuclear materials from terrorists. But response has been slow.

The 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) requires non-nuclear-weapon states to accept safeguards administered by the IAEA on all their nuclear activities. Back then, nuclear terrorism was not seen as a significant threat, and safeguards consist of monitoring and accounting measures to prevent diversion of nuclear material from peaceful nuclear activities to weapons programs.

Current international agreements do not require that nuclear material, except that in international transport, be guarded against thieves or terrorists. This is a dangerous gap in the global barrier, and the IAEA has taken the first steps toward requiring such measures. But this effort must be pursued expeditiously. Every country must take all reasonable steps to ensure that its nuclear material is not part of the next terrorist attack.

Our own Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules contain explicit requirements for protection of licensed civilian reactors, and in 1993—after the World Trade Center bombing and after a car that could have contained a bomb crashed through the fences around Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island reactor—the Commission adopted new standards to protect against truck bombers. But even before September 11th, those standards were criticized as being too weak. And on September 19 an IAEA statement acknowledged that most nuclear power plants are not strong enough to withstand attack by"a large jumbo jet full of fuel" without dispersion of large amounts of deadly radioactive material.

The possibility of terrorist attacks on nuclear reactors is not limited to the United States. Attempts to blow up or penetrate nuclear reactors have been reported in Western Europe, Russia, South Africa, Argentina, and South Korea. If terrorists can crash large planes into the Pentagon, they can certainly find a way to attack nuclear reactors.

Many countries provide some form of physical protection for their nuclear material—walls, fences, human guards, sensors, and alarm systems –but because there is no international requirement for physical protection of civilian nuclear material (as there is for safeguards), countries' protections vary widely and are often inadequate. For example, of 19 countries with nuclear facilities covered by a 1997 survey, only 11 reported that they had designed their physical protection facilities to deal with terrorism. One treaty provides for physical protection of some civilian nuclear material: the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. But it only applies to material in international transport. Seventy countries, including most with major nuclear programs, have signed it.

The IAEA Director General convened a meeting of experts last December to consider a possible amendment to this convention, and, once they had some recommendations, to draft a possible amendment. Sadly, they failed to reach agreement on any amendment, but will meet again later this year. Given the new concerns after September 11, there should be a major, urgent effort to provide specific requirements to protect domestic facilities, not just general ones for international transport. These requirements should deal with protection from sabotage by terrorists as well as theft. There should also be some sort of verification or peer review or reporting requirement. If one country's weapons-usable material is stolen, other countries may well suffer if terrorists like Al Qaeda make bombs from the material. If another Chernobyl disaster is caused by a truck bomber, for example, other countries' populations may suffer from the radioactive fallout. Physical protection practices vary greatly from country to country, and the threat from terrorists, thieves, and saboteurs is all too real.

Adoption of stronger physical protection requirements against these threats is essential, and the sooner the better.

George Bunn, who served on the U.S. delegation that negotiated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is a consulting professor at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Copyright 2002, Global Beat Syndicate, 418 Lafayette Street, Suite 554, New York, NY 10003 http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate.
Copyright 2002, Global Beat Syndicate, 418 Lafayette Street, Suite 554, New York, NY 10003 http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate.