- Guard towers will soon rise over the Three Mile Island
nuclear power plant, part of a series of security upgrades required by
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
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- Exelon Nuclear will spend $70 million to install a series
of 25-foot guard towers at its 10 nuclear plants, including TMI, Peach
Bottom and the Limerick plant in Montgomery County near Philadelphia.
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- The towers, which will be fortified to withstand bullets
but not rocket-propelled grenades, are being required by the nuclear regulatory
agency.
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- The towers are a response to demands for better security
against terrorist assaults at the nation's 103 commercial nuclear power
plants. Details of those requirements were never revealed by the agency,
but Exelon confirmed the requirement for guard towers yesterday.
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- Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agency has required
more security guards, better weapons, stricter background checks and greater
restrictions on who may enter the plants. But the details of those requirements
were never revealed by the agency.
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- Exelon would not say how many guards each tower will
house.
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- "I can only say that this new [level of threat]
we have to defend against requires these installations," said Craig
Nesbitt, a spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, owner of the plants.
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- "It's a great idea," said Scott Portzline,
a Harrisburg activist who has studied nuclear plant security and lobbied
the industry and the nuclear regulatory agency for better security since
the early 1990s. "This is something I recommended back in 1993."
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- TMI will get six towers. Four of those will be 25 feet
tall and will be placed around the plant's protected area, which houses
most of the vital buildings, Nesbitt said. Two smaller towers will be set
inside the protected area.
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- One of those shorter towers will be placed at a vehicle
checkpoint on the other side of the bridge onto TMI. The second will be
placed at the south entrance to the plant, which is rarely used.
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- The Peach Bottom plant in York County will get nine towers.
Exelon also will build a training center at Peach Bottom for firearms training,
Nesbitt said.
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- The Limerick plant will get seven guard towers and an
84,000-square-foot training center.
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- Other planned security improvements include:
- An additional ring of concrete barriers around vital
areas of the plants. They will be outside existing barriers. The move is
designed to make it harder for commandos to get a bomb close enough to
the plant to damage it, Nesbitt said.
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- Permanent barriers will be installed at vehicle checkpoints,
and a roof will be added to move vehicles out of the weather during searches.
Employee vehicles and others that enter the protected area of the plant
are searched, requiring the occupants to get out of the car.
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- So-called "delay fencing" will be added to
some areas of the plants. TMI has a double fence surrounding the most critical
areas of the plant. Some areas of that fence line still deemed vulnerable
will get additional fencing.
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- A delay fence is designed to slow attackers and give
defense forces more time to respond.
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- "We're trying to keep any explosives well away from
the site, and slow down any invasion," Nesbitt said.
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- The guard towers will give security forces greater visibility
and better protection from attackers, Portzline said.
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- "Guards can't run fast enough to cover the territory
they need to," he said. "But with guard towers they can monitor
the space between [perimeter fences] and eliminate the commando threat
with an automatic weapon."
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