News Archive 2003

Mock Attacks Test Security at Indian Pt. Nuclear Plant
By Lydia Polgreen
The New York Times
July 30, 2003

Simulated attacks on the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester have begun, as part of a test this week to look for weaknesses in the plant's security plan, officials said yesterday.

The drill, known as a force-on-force exercise, comes days after the Federal Emergency Management Agency endorsed the plant's hotly disputed emergency evacuation plan. The endorsement on Friday was a setback to a decades-long effort to shut the plant, which is in the village of Buchanan on the Hudson River, 35 miles north of Times Square.

The exercise, in which mock intruders armed with laser guns try to attack the plant, was created after Sept. 11, 2001, to take into account the possibility of a larger-scale assault than the type of sabotage nuclear plants had prepared for in the past, Indian Point officials said. The exercise is expected to last until Friday, said Larry Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Entergy Corporation, which owns the plant.

"Multiple attacks will occur throughout the week, and they will be of considerable size and force," Mr. Gottlieb said. "This is as close as you can get to a real attack without using live ammunition."

The exercises resemble large games of laser tag, in which attackers and security guards face off in a number of different configurations. Receptors worn by both sides determine whether the laser gun has disabled a guard or an attacker. Dozens of officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other federal and local agencies will be on hand to observe the exercises, Mr. Gottlieb said.

People who live near the plant have been alerted through local news organizations not to be alarmed if they hear explosions or gunfire, officials at the plant said.
Groups that have been working to close the plant dismissed the drill as a "farce on farce" exercise, according to Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper, an environmental group that has criticized the plant.

"This is just another public relations effort," Mr. Matthiessen said. "The problem is, it is not testing whether Indian Point can protect itself against a 9/11 attack. It is seeing if the plant can protect itself from a more conventional sabotage attack."

He said that because plant officials knew months in advance when the drill would take place, the exercise did not measure the plant's ability to respond spontaneously to a threat. Also, the results of the test will not be made public, and a failure to successfully repel an attack will not bring fines or other penalties, he said.
Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is supervising the test, said that force-on-force exercises are mostly useful in detecting weaknesses in a plant's response to an attack. He confirmed that the drill involves no penalties, and said that the agency would decide whether to publicize the results.

"We have worked with some of the top security experts in the country in order to determine what would be a reasonable threat to a plant," Mr. Sheehan said. "They have to be able to defend themselves against a reasonable threat, not every conceivable threat."

The emergency management agency will conduct a larger drill next year that will test the emergency plan it approved last week, and that drill will include a terrorist attack scenario, officials at FEMA said last week. The agency approved the plan over the objections of local officials, who refused to certify it.

Critics have sought to close Indian Point for years, saying it is unsafe to have a nuclear plant in such a densely populated area, and had hoped that the emergency management agency would not approve the plan. But Mr. Matthiessen said the fight to close Indian Point would continue despite FEMA's ruling.

"This is a bump in the road," Mr. Matthiessen said of FEMA's decision. "But it was just one of many strategies we were using to shut the plant down. Nothing FEMA did changes the fundamental facts around this plant. It is not a secure plant. There is no workable emergency plan. The energy it generates is replaceable. There is just not a single argument for keeping this plant open."

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