News Archive 2002

Report Finds Security Flaws at Indian Point
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
The New York Times
December 8, 2002

Security guards at the Indian Point nuclear plant did not believe they could protect the plant from an attack, and said their bosses discouraged them from raising security concerns, according to a report written early this year for the plant's owner.

"Only 19 percent of the security officers stated that they could adequately defend the plant after the terrorist event of Sept. 11," said the report, which was completed by a security consultant to the plant's owner last January. It also questioned the training and fitness of the guards.

"Some officers believe that as many as 50 percent of the force may not be physically able to meet the demands of defending the plant," said the report, a copy of which was given to The New York Times by Riverkeeper, an environmental group that wants the plant closed. "The current physical agility test is extremely lax and is not adequate to evaluate the actual physical conditioning of the security force."

Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the company that recently bought Indian Point's two active reactors, said that many concerns raised by the report had been addressed. The company, a subsidiary of the Entergy Corporation, one of the nation's largest power companies, also said that the plant met security requirements set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an assessment confirmed by the commission and by the report.

But in interviews, several current and former guards said that if anything, the report understated the problems, many of which persist, and they still consider the plant very vulnerable.

Guards told of minimal training, of other guards reporting for duty drunk, of security drills that were carefully staged to ensure that mock attackers would be repelled, and of out-of-shape guards forced to work 70 to 80 hours a week or more. The guards and the report referred repeatedly to often-broken electronic security equipment.

An Entergy spokesman, James F. Steets, said, "We accepted the conclusions in the report," though he added that "some parts of that report might be overly alarming."

"We took it seriously," he said, "and we took appropriate actions to address the findings in it."
Among the improvements made in the last year were a new perimeter fence, concrete barriers near the main gate, more-sophisticated security cameras and bullet-resistant enclosures for guards in a few spots.

But guards said that many of the problems listed in the report had not been addressed, including frequent breakdowns in alarm systems that are supposed to warn of an unauthorized entry into the plant. They told of alarm tripwires held together with electrical tape. Fitness requirements for guards have not changed, and the guards' training, they said, has changed little.

"This assessment of security at Indian Point confirms what we've suspected all along, which is that the plant is not adequately defended from a terrorist attack," said the executive director of Riverkeeper, Alex Matthiessen. "If this isn't a wake-up call for elected officials, I don't know what is."

Mr. Steets said the plant's problems were inherited. Entergy Nuclear Northeast bought the Unit 3 reactor from the New York Power Authority in 2000, and Unit 2 from Consolidated Edison last year, days before Sept. 11.

Some concerns, like long hours, have been fairly common in the nuclear power industry, but others, like the manipulation of security drills and the suppression of security complaints, have not.
Indian Point's critics, who have been vigorously campaigning to shut it down, call it a special case.

The plant, in Buchanan, in northern Westchester County, is in the most densely populated area of any nuclear plant in the country, and it lies in the flight path taken by one of the hijacked jets that struck the World Trade Center.

The security report deals only with Unit 2. Guards said that security conditions were marginally better at Unit 3, but that work hours were longer there.

Entergy directly employs the Unit 3 guards, who are paid somewhat higher wages than those at Unit 2, who work for the Wackenhut Corporation, a large company under contract to provide security to Indian Point and to other power plants. Calls to Wackenhut were not returned.

Unit 2 has experienced some highly publicized security lapses this year. In February, a guard was fired for pointing a gun at a colleague, and a supervisor resigned after it was learned that he saw the incident but failed to report it. In September, a Glock semiautomatic handgun carried by a guard was reported missing from Unit 2; it still has not been found.

Entergy commissioned the security report in November 2001, to respond to complaints raised by guards before and after Sept. 11, and it addresses a few specific areas. The author, Keith G. Logan, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigator, interviewed more than 50 guards at Unit 2.

The 33-page report says that 59 percent of the guards "stated that they believe that a chilled environment exists" about raising security concerns, and that 12 percent reported that they had suffered retaliation for doing so.

Guards told Mr. Logan that their supervisors admonished them for trying to raise security concerns during their group meetings. They said supervisors told guards not to fill out incident reports about security lapses - reports that must be filed and become a part of the plant's official record. Instead, they insisted that the complaints be written on blank sheets of paper.

"The chilled environment, that's an issue that we immediately addressed, with training and emphasizing the value of our employee-concerns program," Mr. Steets said. He said that discouraging people from filing formal written reports was "clearly unacceptable," but he could not say if the practice had ended.

The plant increased the number of guards on each shift after Sept. 11, by having them work more. A standard workweek now is five or six 12-hour shifts, and guards say that shifts are often extended to 16 hours, or that they are ordered to work extra days.

Mr. Logan's report did not directly address the issue, but guards said that fatigue was a serious problem. Even before Sept. 11, they said, mandatory overtime was common and many of them felt they were too tired to perform well.

"They are working six 12's, we recognize that," Mr. Steets said. "In January, we plan to hire about 30 new officers to accommodate that."

Several guards spoke of a handful of instances of guards reporting for duty drunk and being sent home, but not being disciplined.

A security sergeant, Foster Zeh, said that twice he reported one officer for showing up "drunk as a skunk," but that the officer was not punished. The officer has since left the plant.

Mr. Steets said that no record of such incidents existed, and that management was unaware of them, "so I really wonder whether that's true or not."

Mr. Zeh is on a paid suspension, Mr. Steets said, but he would not say why. Mr. Zeh said that he was not given a reason, but that he believed the suspension was in retaliation for his complaints about security.

Guards say their training and testing is very limited, and anyone who can walk at a steady pace, climb a few flights of stairs and shoot a gun with moderate accuracy can pass the employment test.

In interviews with The Times and with Mr. Logan, many guards complained that their colleagues were in very poor physical shape, and had to be given multiple chances to pass agility and shooting tests.

Mr. Logan found that some test results - though not of tests required by federal rules - had been falsified.

"Our whole security program is based on what is required of us by the N.R.C., and we meet those requirements," Mr. Steets said.

Mr. Zeh, who helped train other guards, and who recently moved to Unit 3 after five years at Unit 2, said they received no meaningful training in tactics. "There's no ability to act together as a team," he said. "The testing is a joke. An armed assault on the plant cannot be stopped. It's that simple."

Several guards complained that "force-on-force" drills, in which an incursion into the plant is simulated, were too controlled - an area Mr. Logan's report did not touch on. An attack team includes no more than three people; the regulatory commission is considering requiring larger numbers.

"The people playing the attackers were given specific routes of travel, and if they deviated from the routes of travel, the management had a cow," said John R. Kite, a sergeant at the plant until early this year, when he quit and moved to Arizona. "The defenders had done this enough times, they knew exactly what the routes could be. The attackers were told to take it easy. And even so, the defenders a lot of times couldn't stop them."

Mr. Steets said the attackers are instructed in what to do, "but they do run a variety of scenarios, so the defenders don't know."

We're not aware of anyone being told not to push it," he said. "That's something we might look into."
Mr. Kite's account of the drills was confirmed by several other guards who still work at the plant and who asked that their names not be used because they feared retaliation. Mr. Zeh said the simulated attacks were "designed to fail."

Mr. Logan's report also referred to complaints of sexual harassment of guards; again, guards said that the problem was more prevalent than the report indicates, and went beyond sexual harassment. A Jewish guard has sued the plant, charging that he was subjected to anti-Semitism. Some guards tell of colleagues' being abused because they were female, black or gay.

Entergy's Response

The report in question is more than a year old. The allegations largely were about conditions that existed at Indian Point 2 – and only that plant – under the previous owner, before the Entergy Corporation acquired the facility in September 2001. Entergy allowed the study to be completed, and began addressing the points raised.

The report itself noted that many of the impovements suggested by security guards had already been completed, were in process or were under review.

The so-called “chilled environment” for sharing concerns with management did not apply to nuclear safety issues, but instead to how the outside security company managed its workforce. In fact, the report stated that there is not a “chilled environment” at Indian Point regarding raising nuclear safety concerns.

Guards had favorable comments on the new support and respect exhibited by Entergy when it took over the plant, and were optimistic that further changes would occur.

Even before the report was completed, Entergy had spent more than $2 million on security improvements as a result of Sept. 11th, including changes to the defensive strategy and drills that test the ability of guards to defend against attack. Subsequently, further substantial security improvements have been made, including replacing and upgrading surveillance cameras and electronic sensors.

The Indian Point security force is physically able to meet the demands of the job. Each security officer is required to pass an annual medical examination and a range of tests, including physical agility and firearms. The report does not support the claim that 50 percent of the security force may not be physically able to defend the plant.

Over the past three years, there have been only two documented positive test results for alcohol. Both officers were identified upon reporting for work, and both were disciplined.

Since Sept. 11th, security officers have been working extended hours, and fatigue has become an issue throughout the industry. At Indian Point, the issue currently is being addressed through the hiring and extensive training of additional security personnel, scheduled to begin work in early January.

The report was extremely narrow in scope and based solely on past issues at Indian Point 2. By contrast, a team of anti-terrorism experts led by James Kallstrom, then-director of the New York State Office of Public Security, had unrestricted access to the entire Energy Center for its in-depth, two-month evaluation, after Sept. 11th, of the site’s ability to defend itself against an attack. The team had access to confidential files, talked with both security and non-security personnel, and analyzed site blueprints and documents pertaining to defensive strategies. Mr. Kallstrom stated publicly at a press conference that Indian Point was secure from an attack and is “an extremely safe place.”

As a complete examination of the Logan report shows, it is not an indictment of security at Indian Point 2, but a balanced report pointing out many positives.

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