Our Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant

These are desperate days for Entergy, the big Arkansas-based conglomerate that owns the frail Indian Point nuclear plant, located on the east bank of the Hudson River outside Buchanan, New York--just 22 miles from Manhattan.

First, a scathing report by a nuclear engineer fingered Indian Point as one of five worst nuclear plants in the United States and predicted that its emergency cooling system "is virtually certain to fail."

This damning disclosure was hotly followed by the release of a study conducted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which ominously concluded that the chances of a reactor meltdown increase by nearly a factor of 100 at Indian Point because the plant's drainage pits (also known as containment sumps) are "almost certain" to be blocked with debris during an accident.

"The NRC has known about the containment sump problem at Indian Point since September 1996, but currently plans to fix it only by March 2007," says David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The NRC cannot take more than a decade to fix a safety problem that places millions of Americans at undue risk."

Entergy and the NRC both downplayed the meltdown scenario and defended the leisurely pace of the planned repairs, which won't start until 2007. Entergy says that there's no rush to fix the problems with the emergency system because a breakdown isn't likely in the first place.

But that's flirting with almost certain disaster. Entergy and the NRC are staking the lives of millions on the odds of a single water pipe not breaking under pressure. The problem is that these very kinds of pipes have corroded and been breached at other nuclear plants featuring similar pressurized water design. At the Davis-Bessie plant near Toledo, Ohio, a vessel head on one of the cooling water pipes had been nearly corroded away by acid and was dangerously close to rupturing.

The cooling water in these pipes is kept at a pressure of 2,200 pounds per square inch. If a pipe breaks, the 500 degree water would blow off as steam, tearing off plant insulation and coatings. The escaped water would pour into the plant's basement, where sump pumps are meant to draw the water back into the reactor core. But the Los Alamos tests showed that the cooling water will collect debris along the way that will clog up the mesh screens on the pipes leading back into the reactor. If this happens, the cooling of the reactor fuel would stop, the radioactive core would start to melt, and the plant will belch a radioactive plume that will threaten millions downwind.

All this would happen very fast. The Indian Point 2 reactor would exhaust all of its cooling water in less than 23 minutes, while the number 3 reactor would consume all of its water in only 14 minutes. Try getting a nuclear plumber that quickly.

Yes, it sounds trite, but that's essentially what Entergy proposes as its quick fix to the meltdown scenario. Jim Steets, Entergy's spokesman on Indian Point matters, told the New York Times last month that the company was training its workers to scour the plant for flaking paint and potential debris and that if an accident occurred they would pump the water into the core more slowly, a plan that would buy plant managers and executives a few more minutes to flee the scene.

This sobering scenario was followed by news that a review of the company's security record revealed that Entergy, in cahoots with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, faked a test designed to determine whether the plant is vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

In an August letter, the NRC assured members of Congress that Entergy had developed a "strong defensive strategy and capability" for the plant and passed with flying colors a so-called "force-on-force" test, a mock assault.

It turns out, however, that the NRC gave Entergy officials months of advance warning about the test and then, as the Indian Point team cribbed for the exam, dumbed down the assault to ensure that they would pass.

Most assessments by the CIA and other intelligence agencies suggest that an assault on a nuclear plant would require a squad-sized force of between 12 and 14 attackers, who would assault the plant by night, armed with explosives, machine guns with armor-penetrating bullets, and rocket-propelled grenades.

This isn't the attack force that was so easily repelled by the Entergy security team. Instead, Entergy's men battled off a squad of only four mock terrorists, armed only with hunting rifles, who assaulted the plant in broad daylight. Moreover, the attacking squad was not made up of former Delta Force operatives trained in terrorist tactics, but security officers from a nearby nuclear plant who assaulted the plant from only one point after crossing open fields in plain view of Indian Point's security guards.

Just to make sure that there were no surprises, the Entergy security team was warned that the pop-gun mock attack would take place sometime within the next hour. It seems unlikely that Al Qaeda or any other terrorist outfit who finds Indian Point an attractive target would be quite so accommodating.