ML20141G864
| ML20141G864 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Westinghouse, Erwin, 07000754, BWX Technologies, 07000734, 07000008, 07000364, 07000925, 07000371, Framatome ANP Richland, 07000135, 07000033, Wood River Junction, 07001319, 07001143 |
| Issue date: | 02/02/1976 |
| From: | Speth J National Resources Defense Council |
| To: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20141G862 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8601100632 | |
| Download: ML20141G864 (13) | |
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DEFORE Tile NUCLEAR REGULATORY col'JMISSION UNITED STATES OF AMERICA In the matter of NRC Dkt. Nos.:
LICENSEES AUTIIORIZED TO
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70-8 70-754
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70-27 70-820 HOLD OR TRANSPORT s
STRATEGIC QUANTITIES OF
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70-33 70-92'S SPECIAL NUCLEAR 11ATERIALS
)70-135 70-1143 70-143 70-1151 70-364 70-1257 70-371 70-1319 70-734 et al.
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NATURAL
- RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL PETITION FOR ADOPTION OF
. EMERGENCY SAFEGUARD MEASURES OR, ALTER'1ATIVELY, FOR REVOCATION OF LICENSES i
Petitioner Natural.,Rosources' Defenso Council, Inc., hereby
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requests the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, as appropriate, tho Director of Nuclear Material Safety and Safoguards to act immediately to implomont omorgency safeguard monauros which can assure that strategic quantitics of special ' nuclear material (SNM) currently hold or transported by licensocii are protected, with an amplo margin of
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safoty, against the maximum credible threat of theft.
Alternatival -
if such emergoney safoguards cannot bo devised or implomonted effoc-tivoly and immediately, either generally or with rogard to particular
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The neopo of this petition is limitad to those facilitics and art ivit iM cnycred by 10 t' Fit 5 73.1 and not exempt under 10 CFR S 73.
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'.h j l'acilities, petitioner requests, except in those instances where pg,,
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e considerations of national defense require otherwise, that licenses
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L or portions of licenses authorizing the possession or transportation M., /,
lj,,., e e, of strategic quantities of special nucicar material be revoked
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forthwith and that federal authorities.take immediate possession of 4,e i; u.
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such special nucicar material.
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In support of this request, petitioner states as follows:
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1.
Numerous private corporations currently hold materials 7",4 T cs ;
licenses and other licenses from the Nuc1 car Regulatory Commission b./ !.
which authorize the possession and transportation of strategic
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quantities of unirradiated special nucicar materials within the A,f.l; f
' United States.
Certain of these licenses are identified in Attach-
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i Inant A to this petition.
Pursuant to these licenses, thousands of M 'r ' 2!
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kilograms of plutonium and highly enriched tiranium are now hold, i.;.
.'i Processed and transported within the United States by privato cor-n.
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porations.
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2.
Under the Atomic Energy Act and the rules and decisions i,.'l' M?
thereunder, the Commission can issuo a licenso authorizing tho
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Possession of special nt
' car material only upon making a "defini-
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tive finding" that safeguards to prevent tho theft of such matorialc
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are adequate to protect against the maximum credible threat of theft.
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In Power Reactor Development'Co. v. Electrical Unicn, 367 U.S.
- 396, 9$.J. ' };
398, 407 (1961), tho suprome Court noted that the Commission's N/
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obligation to protect the health and safety of the public requires that the agency ma,ke a " definitive finding of safety" at the t;ime k
it authorizes operation of nuc1 car power reactors.
An analogous obligation is imposed in the contoxt of licensos to possess special nucicar materials by 42 U.S.C. S 2077, which requires that tho
. Commission "shall not"' issue a SNM' license which "would be inimical to the common defense and security or would constitute an unreason-able risk to the health and safety of the public."
See also 10 CFR
$ 70.31-32.
The responsibility to protect the public has been con-(
s'istently interjreted by the Commission as requiring that licensed nucl, ear facilities and activities be cons'orvatively designed and operated to withstand maximum credible ovents.
- See, e.g.,
39 FedcraL e
.Register 30964 (August 27, 1974), where ':he Commission states as e
follows:
"In the approach to safety reflected in the Commission's regulations, postulated accidents, for purposes of analy-sis, are divided into two categories - "crediblo" and "in-credible".
The former ("crediblo") are considered to be within the' category of design basis accidents.
Protective measures are required and provided for all those postulated accidents falling within that category, and proposed sites are evaluated by taking into account the conservatively r
calculated consequences of a spec,trum of severo postulated r
accidents.
Thoso accidents falling within the "incrediblo" category are considered to be so improbable that no such protective measures are required."
Furthor, the Atomic Energy Act providos for revocation, u
cu,sponsion~or modification of licenson whenover any ".
fact or a
any report, record or inspection or other means [oxists) which would A
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E warrant the Commission to refuso to grant a licenso on an original U
application...."
42 U.S.C. S 2236 (a).
Soo also 10 CFR Eg 5 70.61(b).
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Numerous studios have been recently conducted assessing t=
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the nature and size of the threat that might confront a licensco L
holding special nuclea'r materials.
One.such study is the Security L
I Agency Study required by Soction 204 (b') (2) (C) of the Enorgy Roorgani-
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sation Act of 1974, the draft Executive Summary of which states as follows:
o "Congrossional concern for adequato safeguards was heightened as a result of a special safoguards study y
done for the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974.
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study, by David Rosenbaum and others,... described a variety of potential problems and short comings in the area of nucioar safeguards and mado recommendations for their solution..
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"The Rosenbaum report expressed concern about the-IE adequacy of protection afforded SNM by the privata k
industrial security systems of licensees.
Ono aspect E
of concern was the Icvel of threat to facilities and E
SNM.
The authors postulated a, maximum credible threat
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consisting of 15 highly trained men, three of whom 5
might be " insiders", employed by the licensco targot g
firm."
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" Threats to nucicar facilities and material can como
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from external or internal sourcos.
External throats would includo overt acts of theft and sabotage.
They
=f span a scale ranging from mischief and mi'nor nuisanco g
through coordinated attacks, which at some point would take on the charactor of civil war.
Internal throats are most often postulated as being covert and might e
L involvo diversion of material, the porpetration of hoaxes and, perhaps, sabotago.
They span a scalo from a
mituir pil fi'r.ttio by indivii!uals, throutth collunion, all
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- t. h i n iu t h t e r. ',l u t t o o t r y
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in which
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i "To estimate thei credible threat, the office of Nuclear Materials safety and Safeguards researched
" 19 relevant studies and conducted 9 interviews with individuals and groups of professional' analysts from l
the FBI, the intelligenco community, the Dopartment of Defense and State and local law enforcement.agen-j eles.
9 "What emerged from this was a" consensus estimate that an external threat group will probably number l
about 6-8 persons and very likely not exceed 12' persons.
" Interviews and studies yieldN less upon which to base estimates of threats internal to the industry.
In general, the internal threat was charactorized as follows:
o,One person operating alone will probably '
' remain undetected.
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o Instances of collusion involving 2-3 persons have been encountered in industry.'
o Most hijackings involvo int',ernal collusion.
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Key internal persons can be influenced by threats against their families or other forms of blackmail.
As q result, a credible internal threat, for safeguards purposes, is estimated to consist of 2-3 persons in col-lusion. " '
Similarly, the January 19, 1976, memorandum of Carl N.
Builder, Director, Division of Safeguards, to konald A. Brightsen, Assistant Director for Licensing, Division of Safeguards, states:
"The design threats'in the sa'feguards supploment to
. GESMO are divided int'o an internal (diversion) and an external. (assault) threat.
Many parameters or eensiderations must be taken into account in describ-lag or specifying such threats.'
To simplify these
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-o descriptions,' we have assumed that all of these para-meters (e.g., motivation, training, arms, equipment, employment position, etc.) are fixed at worst-case values with respect to safoguards, and that the only remaining variablo is tha number of peoplo involved in the threat.
For a nominal or baseline threat, as, a point of departure, we have assumed that the internal -
and external threats are two and six persons, respectivo-ly.
The range of numbers sugcjested by threat rascarchers, expert opinion, and partisan comments generally lie within a factor'of two, up and down, from this baseline specification."
In sum, these studies indicate that an attempt to steal plu-tenium or highly enriched uranium from licensed facilities or while
'. in' transit by a group of 12-15 armed outsiders or 3-4 industry employees in collu'sion should be considered a credible possibility.
Review and assessment of these studies and other studies may indi-sete'that the maximum'cr' edible threat is in fact significantly larger or otherwise more serious.
4.
The January 19, 197., memorandum of Carl H. Builder, ref:renced in paragraph 3 supra and attached hereto as Attachment B, assesses the adequacy of the safeguards now applied at gurrently Licensed facilities as follows:
"Over the past sixemonths, I have been questioned several times as to the adequacy of current safe-guards.
I have replied that I was not in a position p
to judge current safeguards as adequate or inadequate until we had logically structured both the safeguards
" problem and our approach to. solu'tions.
Only then, I argued, would we understand the measures by which we could judge the adequacy of safeguards.
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"If safeguards are not adequate against the lowest levels of design threat that have been suggested, then we must logically conclude that such safeguards are inadequato, quite apart from the uncertainty we may accept about what constitutes adequato safeguard,s.
I am concerned that some or even many of our currently licensed facilities may not have safeguards which aro adequate against the lowest levels of design throat we are considering in GESMO.
"The lowest levels of design threat being considered in GESMO are, for an internal threat, one person and,
- for an external threat, three persons.
I don'.t know of any serious suggestion that these levels are too high and that we should consider even lower levels as design threats for adequate safgguards."
(Emphasis supplied.)
Thus, the principal source of Commission expertise on the question Cf safeguards has indicated that he is "not in a position" to make
. O definitive finding 'that currently li' censed f acilities are adequate-ly safeguarded and, indeed, that he is " concerned that some or even many currently licensed facilities" are not protected against even very s % 1 threats -- threats far less serious than the maximum orodible threat.
5.
The concerns expressed in the Builder Memorandum regardin.;
the inadequacy oS current safeguard practices confirm the conclusions of numerous independent experts.
Thus, Dr. Theodoro B. Taylor, a safegutros authority and consultant to the NRC, testified in his December 10, 1975 statement before'tho' Committee on Energy and Diminishing Materials of the California State Assen61y as follows:
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-3 "Present U.S'.' safeguarda appli'ed to commercial plutonium and highly enriched uranium are not ado-quate to provent thoft by heavily armed groupn with resources and motivation comparabic to the Drintis gang and other groups of professional criminals that have carried out successful major robberics in the past.
Though not routinely recycled in power plants, p1vtonium for commercial.R&D purposes is now stored and transported in. substantial quantities, annual shipments amounting to at least soveral hun-dred kilograms.per year."
Similarly, the Special Safeguards Study ("Rosenbaum Report") pre-
. par'ed by Atomic Energy Commission consultants and rol, eased April 29, 1974, concluded:
"In recent years the factors which make safeguards a real, imminant and vital issue have changed rapidly
.,for the worso, Terrorists. groups have increased their professional skills, intelligence networks, finances
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and level of armaments throughout the world."
"The factors involved in preventing the illegal ac-quisition of special nuclear material.and the subsequent manufacture of nuclear weapons have received a great deal less attention than those associ'ated with power plant accidents.
The relevant regulations are far less strin-gent and we feel they are entirely inadeqt:ato to meet the threat.
The seriousness of the problem demands a clear commitment by the AEC to bring the risk to the public from safeguards problems down to the level of public risk associated with the operation of nuclear power plants."
(Emphasis supplied.)
6.
The possibility that nuclear weapons materials now held by U.S. corporations under 'NRC licenses might be stolen and used is real and substantial.
Terrorist, activity and other forms of' anti-social violence are an almost daily occurrence.
In the 0
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present age of sophisticated criminal organisations, bombs and bomb' tlweats, of aircraft hijacking, of the ransom of diplomats and the
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musder of Olympio athletes, the risks of nuclear theft, blackmail.
and terrorism'should not be minimised.
A criminal or terrorist group, using information and equipment that are widely available, could design and build a crude nuclear bomb which could be carried la,an" automobile and could' explode with a yield equal to at least 100 tons of high explosive.
A recent report to the NRC by the Nitre Corporation, The Threat To Licensed Nuclear Facilities (MTR-7022, september 1975), reached the following conclusions:
"The only prudent prediction is that there will continue to be international operations by most of the presently active terrorist organizations through-out the world; that new ones will spring into exis-tence, sometimes without any warning before their first dramatic strike; a6d that so'me of these groups, driven by ideology, need for political leverage on the United States, or desperation, may choose the United States, and perhaps licensed nuclear facilities, as a target."
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"Organised crime in the United States has demon-strated the capacity to oxocute complicated actions with planning, coordination, secrecy, patience, and whatever level of force and armament is necessary to y
accomplish the job.
They aro interested solely in acquiring more money and power for themselves and there le no evidence that they havo or ever had any motivation such as patriotism.
They are involved in almost all the hijacking that goes on in the United states, and have been able to exert considerable control over substantial parts o'f industry, labor, and government.
Their business is often international and they have longstanding and secure links in Europe, the Middle
. Baat, Latin America, and the Far East.
There is little question that, for*t. sufficient amount of monay,
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1 members of organized crime would.tako a contract to acquiro special. nuclear material for another party.
(A) large proportion of their operations involvo oooperation from people inside their targot.
7.
In light of the forogoing, the commission should conclude that an adequate basis does not now exist for finding tint currently applied safeguards are adequate to protect against the theft of strate-gio quantities of plutonium and highly enriched uranium now in the possession of licensees.
Both the Director of the NRC's Safeguards
. Division and the, agency's consultants are unable to make a definitive
' finding that current safeguards are adequate.
Yet, unless the.
Commission can make such a definitive finding of safety regarding these. licenses, the commission's obligation to the public requires that such licenses be revoked forthwith.
Accordingly, petitioner sages the commission and, as appropriate,'the Director of Nuclear Material safeguards and safety (a) to review immediately the safeguard programs of all facilities licensed to possess strategic quantities of special nuclear material in order to identify all 'such facilities for which existing safeguards are inadequate to protect, with an ample margin of saf'ety, against the maximum credible
. threat of theft.
The determination of an ample margin of safety is essential in light of oxisting uncertainties regarding the upper limit of the maxim,um credibic threat.
This review might reveal A
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that all such facilities are inadequately safe-guarded.
l (b) to develop and implement on an expedited basis 1
emergency safeguards which can assure with an ample margin of safety that strategic quantitics of speciai nuclear material held by licensees are protected against the maximum credible theft threat.
Such emergency safeguards might include, among others, the following:
(1) immediate dispatchment of forces from the U.S. Marshals Service to
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appropriate fixed sites; (2) curtailment of relevant licensee activities at fixed sites where consistent with national defense considerations; (3) elimination of all transportation of strategic quantities of special nuclear material other than that essential to national defense; and (4) where transportation of such special nuclear material is essential to national defense, use of forces from the U.S. Marshals Service to accompany g
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E (c) to revoke outstanding licenses which authorize h
the possession of strategic quantities of special'
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nuclear material, and to recover sucli matcrial
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immediately, if safeguafds meeting the standard s
j set out in subparagraph (b) supra are not now f
in place and (1-) cannot be devised or implemented
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quickly and effectively or (2) can be implemented E
i only with undue difficulty or expense.
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8.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a non-t
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profit corporation organized under the laws of the State of New r
York.
It is a national environmental protection organization with more than 20,000 members in 50 states.
One of NRDC's major objec-
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tives is to protect its members and tlie public from the ritiks and b
other consequences of nuclear power development,. including the risks
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licensed facilities or with attacks directed against.such facilities.
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NRDQ's interests and those it its members and the public are adversely
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affected by the activities of private corporations carried out pur-6 suant to the licenses referred.to herein.
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Por 'the foregoing reasons, petitioner respectfully urges that the requests made herein,bc granted without delay.
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s Respectfully submitted:
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Of Counsel:
J.G. Speth
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Anthony Z. Roisman
' Natural Resources Defense Counc;1
}
1712 N Street, N.W.
917 Fifteenth Street, N.W.
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Washington, D.C.
20036 Washington, D.C.
20005
-(202) 737-5000 y
Attorney for Petitioner F
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February 2, 1976 7
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