By Mike Burke
The security guards work up to 16 hours a day, sometimes for seven days straight. Morale is low. Their confidence in management may be even lower. They admit being under-qualified and under-trained in key security aspects. Also, they often have very little experience. Some even show up for work drunk
These are not the security guards at the local shopping mall, but the men and women entrusted to protect perhaps the most sensitive facility in the New York area, the Indian Point nuclear power plant.
Twenty million people live within a 50-mile radius of Indian Point's reactors. An attack on the facility could have apocalyptic consequences and could render the entire New York City metro area uninhabitable. And such an attack is no longer inconceivable to many: on Sept. 11 the two hijacked planes that crashed into the Twin Towers flew directly over the Indian Point nuclear site in Buchanan.
But a recently released study by Indian Point’s owner revealed that 81 percent of guards felt they could not adequately protect the site from an attack.
"This report suggests that security at Indian Point has more holes than Swiss cheese," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY).
In the 18 months after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, so-called homeland security has become a key legislative priority. But at Indian Point and nuclear sites across the country, the federal government and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have been repeatedly assailed for failing to increase security or to take proper precautions in the event of an attack.
In early January, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) accused the NRC of failing to protect nuclear sites from attacks after Sept. 11. Clinton called for a federal security coordinator for each nuclear power plant and the creation of federal teams to protect plants from attacks.
Currently the private firm Wackenhut employs the workers at Indian Point Unit 2, which is owned by the Entergy corporation. Wackenhut is the second-largest provider of security services in the country and has long been charged with cutting security costs and hiring unqualified staff to maximize profit.
Texas terminated its prison contract with Wackenhut after reports that guards were sexually abusing inmates. In New Mexico prisons, nine stabbings and five murders occurred on Wackenhut’s watch, all within the first year of operations. Investigative journalist Greg Palast said of the situation: “New Mexico's privately operated prisons are filled with America's impoverished, violent outcasts—and those are the guards.”
And now Wackenhut oversees the guards at Indian Point.
To make matters worse, in mid-January, a new study commissioned by Gov. George Pataki confirmed the fears of many critics, finding that the county’s evacuation plan would fail in the event of a nuclear disaster.
Still the word from Entergy is to stay calm and be patient.
A recent booklet on Indian Point distributed to residents of Westchester County discussed how to react in the event of a disaster: " … You should evacuate as promptly as possible, but you will have plenty of time to leave."
"The current plan is a sham that has put the lives of New Yorkers at risk for decades,” said John Flanigan of the New York Public Interest Group. “This threat has been looming over New York City like a black cloud for too long. We need to shut off this ticking time bomb once and for all.”
