Table Of Content\Ll}
^^ S. Hrg. 103-57
ADEQUACT OF NUCLEAR POWERPLANT SECURIH
M.P
96/ lO.S. HRG, 103-57
idequacy of Huclear Poucrplant Secu...
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
CLEAN AIR AND NUCLEAE REGULATION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED THIRD CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MARCH
19, 1993
Printed for the use of the Clommittee on Environment and Public Works
'= w.;n.
m
^"t
^ ?
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
66-197^ WASHINGTON 1993
:
Forsalebythe U.S. GovernmentPrintingOffice
SuperintendentofDocuments. Congressional SalesOffice,Washington,DC 20402
ISBN 0-16-040883-0
j^
S. Hrg. 103-57
ADEQUACY OF NUCLEAR POWERPLANT SECURITY
4.P 96/10: S. HRG. 103-57
equ3C5i of Huclear Poucrplant Secu...
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
r
CLEAN AIE AND NUCLEAE REGULATION
OF THE
COmflTTEE ON
ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED THIRD CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MARCH
19, 1993
Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works
^«>?trti*V.
ji-rV
JUL
?
,
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
66-197*5 WASHINGTON 1993
:
Forsale by ihe U.S. Government PrintingOffice
Superintendent ofDocuments. Congressional SalesOffice, Washington, DC 20402
ISBN 0-16-0A0883-0
COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
MAX BAUCUS, Montana, Chairman
DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, New York JOHN H. CHAFEE, Rhode Island
GEORGE J. MITCHELL, Maine ALAN K. SIMPSON, Wyoming
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey DAVE DURENBERGER, Minnesota
HARRY REID, Nevada JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
BOB GRAHAM, Florida ROBERT SMITH, New Hampshire
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut LAUCH FAIRCLOTH, North Carolina
HOWARD M. METZENBAUM, Ohio DIRK KEMPTHORNE, Idaho
HARRIS WOFFORD, Pennsylvania
BARBARA BOXER, California
Peter L. Scher, StaffDirector
Steven J. Shimberg, Minority StaffDirector and ChiefCounsel
Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Regulation
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, New York ALAN K. SIMPSON, Wyoming
BOB GRAHAM, Florida LAUCH FAIRCLOTH, North Caroline
HOWARD METZENBAUM, Ohio DIRK KEMPTHRONE, Idaho
(ID
CONTENTS
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Lieberman, Hon. Joseph I., U.S. Senator from the of State Connecticut 1
Simpson, Hon. Alan K., U.S. Senator from the State of Wyoming 17
WITNESSES
Brandon, Harry B. Ill, Deputy Assistant Director, Intelligence Division, Fed-
eral Bureau of Investigation 4
Prepared statement 53
Colvin, Joe F., President and Chief Executive Officer, Nuclear Management
and Resources Council 40
Prepared statement 70
Greenberg, Eldon V.C, on behalf ofthe Nuclear Control Institute 39
Prepared statement 64
Hoffman, Bruce, Rand Corporation 43
Prepared statement 88
Selin, Hon. Ivan, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission 23
Prepared statement 61
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Portzline, Scott D., statement of 102
United Plant Guard Workers ofAmerica, letter from 113
(III)
ADEQUACY OF NUCLEAR POWERPLANT
SECURITY
FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1993
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Environment and Public Works,
Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Regulation,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:09 a.m. in room
406, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman
[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Baucus, Kempthorne, and Simp-
son.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, U.S.
SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
Senator Lieberman. The hearing will come to order.
Good morning, and welcome to this hearing of the subcommittee
on Clean Air and Nuclear Regulation. This morning, with the
normal uncertainties of Senate scheduling, I want to indicate that
there's a vote set to go off in about five minutes, and we have
about 20 minutes. Senator Baucus and I, to get over there and
come back. So I think we'd like to start and give our opening state-
ments, at least, and then see where we are. We may have to recess
for a few moments.
Today this subcommittee is going to look at the adequacy of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rules and regulations to protect
nuclear powerplants from terrorism and sabotage. On February 7th
of this year, an intruder drove through the gate at the Three Mile
Island nuclear powerplant and proceeded into the protected area of
the plant. He crashed his station wagon into the door of the tur-
bine building and then ran inside the building, where it took four
hours to find him. During that period, it was not known whether
he was alone, whether he was armed, and what his intentions
were. Fortunately, the intruder did no significant damage to the
plant.
Shortly after the incident, when I read about it, I wrote to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission asking for its own report on that
incident. I asked the NRC to explain whether it would have been
better, for instance, to shut the plant down rather than keep it
running at full power while the intruder was inside the turbine
building. I also noted the statement of one of the officials at the
NRC that we need "not to worry much about terrorists," and I
asked about the NRC's intentions with regard to security require-
(1)
NRC
merits at nuclear powerplants. I hope that the can help us
with the beginnings of answers to some of those questions today.
After about three weeks passed from the time of the incident at
Three Mile Island, and a week after the letter that I wrote to the
NRC, as we all well know, a bomb was intentionally placed in the
parking garage underneath the World Trade Center in New York
City. The explosion that followed killed six people, injured hun-
dreds more, and that horrible incident I think fundamentally
changed Americans' perceptions about our vulnerability to terror-
ist attack. It was, after all, the most significant terrorist attack
within this country in almost 17 years, since the bomb was placed
at La Guardia Airport in 1975.
Taken together, these two events raise this question: Are nuclear
powerplants adequately protected against violent attack, either by
sabotage or by terrorism? More specifically, in this case, are nucle-
ar powerplants protected against people using vehicles to drive ex-
NRC
plosives right up to the plant? To date, the FBI and the have
concluded that this type of attack on a nuclear powerplant is un-
likely. They believe that current nuclear powerplant security re-
quirements are adequate, and, in fact, there has never been an
attack by a bomb-laden vehicle on an American nuclear power-
plant.
As a result, current NRC regulations do not require nuclear pow-
erplant security systems to protect against truck bombs. In techni-
cal terms, the use of vehicles as bombs or the use of vehicles to
carry —explosives are not considered part of the design basis
threat ^that's the term of art here—the design basis threat that
nuclear powerplants must be able to protect against. However, this
does not mean, of course, that such an event can never occur. That
an attack has not yet happened obviously does not mean that it
will never happen, and we hold this hearing this morning to do
whatever we can, working with officials of the NRC and the FBI, to
make sure that we in our Government are doing all we can to
guarantee that such an attack will never occur.
In doing so, this subcommittee is following the age-old wisdom
We
that it is better to be safe than to be s—orry. know, for instance,
that as good as counterintelligence is and counterintelligence is
an important part of our Counter Terrorism program in this coun-
—
try it's not perfect. We cannot know about every terrorist act in
advance, particularly when carried out by groups that seem inde-
We
pendent, perhaps even amateurish. cannot prevent every ter-
rorist act from occurring. Thus, fail-safe protective measures
against terrorism, in my opinion, cannot be based on counterintelli-
gence alone.
So the plant security requirements are very, very important. I
think they must be periodically reexamined to ensure that they're
up to date and they're protecting against realistic threats. In fact,
on March 1st of this year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission an-
nounced that it is reviewing the so-called design basis threat for
nuclear powerplants, and that is reassuring news.
This subcommittee has oversight of the NRC and its regulatory
NRC
programs. Therefore, we feel an obligation to ensure that the
is properly considering the evidence presented by the intelligence
community and by the nuclear power industry in developing their
security requirements. Today we're going to consider the views of
We
intelligence experts on the nature of the terrorist threat. will
also consider whether the NRC should require that nuclear power-
plant security systems be upgraded to prevent incidents like the
one at Three Mile Island or even more serious car or truck bomb-
ings, and whether the NRC should, as some are petitioning it to do
now, lower some of their internal security requirements that are
currently in place.
We obviously are very lucky that the intruder at Three Mile
Island did not cause more damage. He carried no weapons and no
bomb. But, obviously, he could have. The break-in at Three Mile
Island was a warning bell, and what happened a month later in
New York was really a warning earthquake. So we're asking today,
isn't it time to respond to those warnings by taking additional
steps to prevent intrusions onto the property of nuclear power-
plants? The fact is that you can't drive a car near the garage in
this building without going around a big number of cement blocks,
through two gates, and past several security guards. If we do all
that just to protect United States Senators, shouldn't we do even
more to protect a nuclear powerplant?
Now, because this is an open hearing, we don't want to discuss
any classified information. In any democratic system of govern-
ment, obviously, there's always a tension between maintaining se-
crecy about security requirements and maintaining public review
of governmental actions. However, there has been a good public
debate on many of these issues over more than a decade without
any compromise of plant security, and this hearing is intended to
further that healthy debate.
I would now yield to the Chairman of the full committee, the
Senator from Montana, Senator Max Baucus.
Senator Baucus. Thank you very much. Senator. I'm very
pleased that you are holding this hearing this morning. I think it s
obvious that the more this committee can get ahead of problems
rather than behind them, the better off the country will be and the
better off all of us in this committee will be.
The warning signals are clear. Obviously, the incident at Three
Mile Island where someone drove into the plant and was able to
hide out for several hours indicates that we've got a problem. Com-
bined with Three Mile Island, someone apparently drove into the
parking garage at the World Trade Center, and we know the devas-
tation that caused. We're also reminded of the Marine barracks
tragedy in Lebanon. Although it occurred in another country, it
was another incident where someone drove an explosive laden vehi-
cle into an American facility, and caused severe damage.
It creates questions of confidence as well. People who work in or
live around a nuclear facility want to have peace of mind. They
want to know that they can live and work and conduct their lives
the same as most everybody in this country. They don't want to
live with the possibility of a devastating incident occurring right
where they live or work.
I know that NRC means well, and I think this is an opportunity
for us to dig down a little deeper and to do the very best possible
job we can of making sure that we minimize the potential of a dev-
astating occurrence.
I commend you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing, and I
look forward to the testimony of the witnesses.
Thank you.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Senator Baucus. Thank you for
We
your support. appreciate that you, as the Chairman of the full
committee, are taking the time to be with us this morning.
The bell has just sounded for the vote, and with your indulgence,
I'd like to recess the hearing so we can go and vote and—then come
back and continue the hearing. We'v—e been guaranteed insofar as
guarantees are worth anything here that there won't be another
vote until 11:30.
The hearing will recess.
[Recess.]
We
Senator Lieberman. will resume the hearing, and I thank
you for your patience.
Our first panel is from the FBI. We have Harry Brandon, who is
accompanied by William McGrath.
We
welcome you.
STATEMENT OF HARRY B. BRANDON, III, DEPUTY ASSISTANT DI-
RECTOR, INTELLIGENCE DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU OF IN-
VESTIGATION, ACCOMPANIED BY WILLIAM MCGRATH, UNIT
CHIEF, COUNTER TERRORISM PLANNING UNIT
Mr. Brandon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the interest of time,
I will try and summarize my statement.
Senator Lieberman. Without objection, all statements will be
We
printed in full in the record. appreciate your willingness to ab-
breviate.
Mr. Brandon. As you've noted, on February 26, 1993, the whole
country stood riveted as events showed that an explosive device
had caused extensive damage to the World Trade Center. Eventual-
ly, we would all become aware that this criminal act had resulted
in a tragic loss of life, as well as injuries to hundreds and hundreds
of innocent persons, and extensive property damage.
There has certainly been a lot of speculation that this bombing
was the work of terrorists. We are conducting an investigation. We
consider it as a suspected act of terrorism. I do need to stress that
this investigation is still ongoing, and many questions remain to be
resolved, and legal proceedings have not really begun. Accordingly,
I'm really unable to discuss this particular case in any detail.
I would like to observe, however, that whatever the motivation,
we do not have a reason to believe that this incident is the forerun-
ner of a wave of terrorism inside the United States. I think you're
aware that since the Persism Gulf crisis, the terrorist threat level
in the United States has actually been considered to be low. Per-
haps even more significant, £is these charts will show, between 1982
and 1992 terrorist incidents within the United States, with few ex-
ceptions, have shown a steady decline.
I don't minimize the recent activity at Three Mile Island or the
World Trade Center. It certainly does remind us we can't be com-
We
placent. have to continue to develop plans and initiatives to
guard against this sort of either criminal act or act of terrorism.
