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Prepared Witness Testimony The House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Comprehensive National Energy Policy
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality
Dr. Edwin Lyman
I would like to thank Chairman
Barton and the other distinguished members of the Subcommittee for the
opportunity to present the views of the Nuclear Control Institute on the role
that nuclear power should play in a comprehensive national energy policy.In the post-September 11 era, this issue merits most careful
consideration. The Nuclear Control Institute
is not an anti-nuclear organization.However,
we do believe that the nuclear industry and its regulator, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, have an extraordinary obligation to the American people
to ensure that this inherently dangerous technology is used as wisely, safely
and securely as possible.We also
believe that the Department of Energy has a responsibility to respect
long-standing U.S. nonproliferation policy in pursuing the development of new
nuclear technologies, both in its domestic and international cooperative
research programs.We cannot afford
to repeat the mistakes of the early promoters of nuclear energy, whose lack of
foresight has contributed in no small measure to the real and growing threat of
nuclear and radiological terrorism that Americans face today. Unfortunately, the lackluster
response of the NRC to the urgent nuclear security concerns that arose after the
September 11 attacks calls into question its credibility as a responsible
regulator of the U.S. nuclear energy infrastructure.And DOE's misguided plans to revive spent fuel reprocessing
and plutonium recycle in the U.S. and to encourage it abroad --- albeit under
the guise of "proliferation-resistant" technology --- will only
increase the threat of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism in the world. It is therefore up to Congress
to ensure that any nuclear component of a comprehensive national energy policy
be fully consistent with the fundamental objectives of homeland security and
non-proliferation.This requirement
raises difficult policy issues.It
is becoming increasingly apparent that effective homeland security cannot be
bought on the cheap.It may turn
out that the cost of measures needed to provide the American people with
adequate protection from nuclear and radiological terrorism will be too great
for the nuclear industry to bear and remain economically viable.If the security of nuclear facilities can be guaranteed only with public
subsidy, Congress should assess how its constituents feel about using their tax
money for this purpose.But if
public reaction is decidedly negative, Congress needs to reconsider whether
nuclear energy should have a significant role in the future or whether efforts
should be directed toward technologies that present less tempting targets to
terrorists. I would now like to discuss a
few specific objectives that are in our view essential elements of a responsible
nuclear energy policy. If nuclear power is to have a
continuing role in the nation's energy mix, there must be a fundamental change
in our approach to protecting nuclear power plants and materials from being used
as instruments of terror.Nearly 18
months after the September 11 attacks, NRC is still dragging its heels in
putting into place a new framework for nuclear facility protection, the nuclear
industry is bitterly resisting any new security requirements that will cost it
money, and policymakers throughout the government appear no closer to resolving
the crucial issue of who should have responsibility for protecting nuclear
facilities against September 11-scale threats.Congressional action is needed to break these logjams, and the section on
"Nuclear Facility Threats" in the draft energy bill under discussion
is a step in the right direction. The draft legislation would
authorize a Presidential review of threats to nuclear facilities, in
consultation not only with NRC but with other appropriate agencies.This review would take into account realistic assessments of the
post-September 11 terrorist threat, and would identify an appropriate
"design basis threat" (DBT), establishing the dividing line between
the level of protection that is the responsibility of NRC licensees and the
level that is the responsibility of the Federal Government.This question raises complex policy issues requiring high-level
consideration and full interagency involvement, including the appropriate role
of Federal assets in protecting commercial nuclear facilities. This review is needed because
right now the decision on a revised DBT is being made entirely within NRC,
including closed-door consultations with the industry on the impact of the
revision on its financial bottom line.This
is inappropriate.The magnitude of
today's terrorist threat should be based on the best intelligence information,
something that utility executives are not in a position to assess.And the decision as to where the responsibility of the industry stops and
that of the Federal Government begins should obviously involve a wider group
than just the NRC and the industry it regulates. A related issue that needs to
be addressed is that the private sector is having difficulty providing security
forces flexible enough to adjust rapidly to changes in the homeland security
threat status.Utilities have
proven to be unwilling to hire new security guards to meet the greater demands
associated with an increase in the threat status if it appears that the higher
alert will only last for a short time, as has been the case so far.But this means that the existing guard forces are being burdened with
excessive overtime at exactly the times that they need to be at peak levels of
alertness and performance.Federal
or other public resources --- such as a reserve force of nuclear plant
responders --- may be needed to smooth out these transitions. Moreover, more general Federal
assistance to nuclear plant guard forces may also be appropriate.To remedy the wide variations in qualifications, fitness and training
among private security forces, the U.S. could standardize the process for
hiring, training and retraining guards by instituting a Federal academy for this
purpose.Graduates of this course would be certified to work as
nuclear plant armed responders, subject to periodic recertification. Broader government involvement
and interagency expertise are also needed in considering how to deal with the
ultimate September 11 threat of a jet aircraft attack on a nuclear plant.Although anti-aircraft weapons are now guarding the skies around
Washington, the NRC continues to scoff at suggestions that it seriously consider
requiring such protection at nuclear plants.Unsupported industry claims that nuclear power plants are essentially
invulnerable to a jet attack are of little comfort to people who know that these
plants remain undefended from the air. The draft bill's provision to
establish an "operational safeguards response evaluation" program for
periodic force-on-force testing of nuclear facility security is also needed.But this provision would be strengthened if establishment of the program
were put on a fast track and made more specific to addressing the deficiencies
in NRC's own program.Although NRC
finally appears to be resuming force-on-force testing after an 18-month hiatus,
it is commencing with only a voluntary "pilot program" in which the
exercises will not be graded on a pass-fail basis and no enforcement actions
will be taken in the event of poor performance.At a time when America is facing the threat of terrorist reprisals in
response to the imminent war in Iraq, we do not have the luxury of engaging in a
drawn-out experimental program, or being patient if nuclear plant security
forces prove unable to protect their facilities from a terrorist-caused
meltdown.The NRC should
immediately start formally testing the security at nuclear plants of its
choosing, utilizing credible adversary characteristics (for both outsiders and
insiders), and sanctioning plants that fail. Finally, Congress should ensure
that, if nuclear power is to remain an option in the United States, the
regulatory processes for license renewal, new plant design approval and new
plant siting should take into account the potential for deliberate acts of
malice in addition to spontaneous accidents.The growing yet unpredictable threat of catastrophic terrorism has thrown
a monkey wrench in NRC's traditional regulatory decision-making process, which
is predicated on the assumption that the most severe accidents are the most
infrequent and hence require far less consideration.But today, NRC should be required to seriously assess the potential for
severe radiological releases resulting from a terrorist attack. For emergency planning, NRC
should determine all who are at risk from a terrorist attack and ensure that
they can be protected, using methods grounded in science rather than public
relations.Such an effort should
result in the designation of emergency planning zones far larger than the
10-mile radius zones in place today.According
to calculations I have performed using NRC-approved codes, these zones may have
to extend more than a hundred miles downwind.If such zones are impractical and the residents cannot be adequately
protected, then there must be a clear regulatory mechanism for shutting down
plants that pose unacceptable risks. For license renewal and new
plant siting, there should be a required assessment of the desirability of plant
locations as terrorist targets from the standpoint of symbolic value, potential
consequences and inability to evacuate the area at risk.This would help to avoid ill-advised siting decisions, such as the one
that allowed the Indian Point nuclear plant to be built only thirty miles from
New York City. And for new plant designs,
resistance to terrorist attack should be a fundamental design requirement --- in
contrast to the current generation of nuclear plants, which are vulnerable to
common-mode failures that terrorists can induce with a minimum of effort. Many of these issues could be
addressed in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) proceedings.However, the NRC recently ruled that the consequences of terrorist
attacks need not be considered in Environmental Impact Statements because
"the possibility of a terrorist attack ... is speculative and simply too
far removed from the ... consequences of agency action to require a study under
NEPA."Congress should mandate
that NRC carry out "homeland security impact assessments" for all
significant agency actions. In summary, we need to solve
the outstanding security problems affecting our nuclear industry today before we
can guarantee a long-term role for nuclear power in our country.I would point out that in an interview last September 11, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed said that al Qaeda decided to omit nuclear facilities from its list of
targets "for now."As
terrorists become increasingly desperate and dangerous, it would be foolish to
expect that U.S. nuclear facilities will remain off that list much longer. Now I would like to briefly
comment on the Department of Energy's Advanced Fuel Recycling and Generation IV
programs.The Nuclear Control
Institute is opposed to spent fuel reprocessing on proliferation grounds, and
believes that the U.S. moratorium on reprocessing, the outcome of a review begun
in the Ford Administration, is sound policy.It allowed the U.S. to avoid the cost and risk associated with the
accumulation of large stockpiles of separated civil plutonium, in contrast to
countries that did not follow our lead, including the United Kingdom, France,
Russia and Japan.It also gave the
U.S. the moral authority to block the transfer of reprocessing technology to
countries like South Korea. Therefore, in our view, the
desire of the White House and the Department of Energy to overturn this policy
and pursue research, development and deployment of new reprocessing technologies
is deeply troubling.This shift
will send the wrong signal to the rest of the world, giving a boost to countries
like Japan whose own plutonium recycling programs are in disarray, and removing
the brakes on the ambitions of many other nations to reprocess their spent fuel.This will increase the risk of theft or diversion of plutonium at a time
when the threat of nuclear terrorism has never been as great. DOE's claim that the
technologies it will develop are "proliferation-resistant" gives
little reassurance.There is
nothing new about these concepts that would change the conclusion reached by
numerous analyses in the 1970s that the proliferation risks associated with
reprocessing cannot be fixed with technical means.Unless the most rigorous safeguards and physical protection measures are
applied to nuclear material during processing, transport, storage and
utilization, plant insiders or suicidal attackers will be able to defeat the
modest deterrent effect of the "proliferation-resistant" fuel cycles
that DOE has proposed.And
diversion of plutonium will be even harder to detect in
"proliferation-resistant" facilities than in conventional reprocessing
plants because the ability to make precise measurements would be diminished. DOE's advanced fuel recycling
research is not likely to win any converts among nations that already operate
conventional reprocessing plants, such as France, but it is likely to give
encouragement to countries that do not now reprocess but would like to, such as
South Korea.The net effect of this
program will be to increase the quantity of poorly safeguarded and protected
nuclear weapon material in the world. DOE's January 2003 report to Congress on its Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative failed to answer nearly all of the questions that it was required to address for the technologies under study, providing no information on waste streams, life cycle costs, proliferation resistance or facility siting strategy.Before spending a penny more on this wasteful and dangerous program, Congress should demand and receive substantive answers to these questions. Thank you for your attention.
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