Orange County Register

We wrote in an earlier post about how sleepy security guards are handled at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. (The question was prompted by the snoozing guard discovered at Pennsylvania’s Peach Bottom plant last year.)

Not to terrify you or anything, but this nuclear-guard-sleeping-on-duty thing is not exactly an isolated incident.

In addition to Peach Bottom, a guard at New York’s Indian Point nuclear power plant was caught slumbering - at 2 in the afternoon - outside a secured entrance to the plant’s operating area. (Imagine the surprise of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector who caught him - and who tried to wake him for two solid minutes before the guard was roused. This is one man who seriously needs to stop clubbing.) And it wasn’t the first time: An Indian Point guard was caught sleeping in 2002 as well.

These are the incidents that we know about - and that’s mostly by fluke, because someone leaked information or another branch of government swooped in to investigate.

Why don’t we hear more about such security-related lapses at our nation’s nuclear plants?

Because, in the wake of 9/11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s security inspection reports are not public.

There’s logic to that: Officials don’t want to tip off terrorists to weak spots.

But still. The veil of secrecy worries some folks who live near the plant. Neighbor Lyn Harris Hicks, for example, fears that San Onofre is hiding something.

What is public is the cover letter to those secret security inspection reports.

Which is where we learn that, in September, San Onofre had “one finding of very low security significance” which was “promptly corrected or compensated for,” according to the summary letter sent by the NRC to Southern California Edison, which runs San Onofre.

What was this one finding of very low security significance?

We are not entitled to any further information.

In March 2007, the NRC noted two “severity level 4″ violations at San Onofre, defined as “violations of more than minor concern which, if left uncorrected, could lead to a more serious concern.” (It’s the least significant of the NCR’s four severity levels.)

Security inspections in March turned up nothing of significance, the NRC said.

Of course, the NRC has other issues with San Onofre - particularly, human performance problems. A meeting on safety was held Thursday; the NRC starts a special inspection of San O today.

Activists aren’t so happy with this secret security thing, and the NRC is taking note. It is holding three public meetings on the secret security issue - one last week, and two this week, though  none are in our area, unfortunately. But info on how you can participate by phone and send your comments to the NRC is available by clicking here.

“As with all U.S. nuclear plants, San Onofre security is based on an approach called ‘defense in depth,’ meaning that multiple overlapping layers of human, electronic and structural security prevent the failure of any one person or system from endangering the plant,” SCE spokesman Gil Alexander wrote me in an email.

“Our plant and other nuclear plants are without question the most hardened facilities in the country against security threats,” he said. “We have no doubts about that.”

• Click here to read more Watchdog
• Click here to read about human performance problems at San Onofre
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