This week: A very thorough explanation of what’s really going on at Indian Point (from someone who seems to know); and Kelly Kreth gets her mouth washed out with soap.
Guarding the Truth
I read Becca Tucker’s nuclear security piece, “Yawn Patrol,” (Nov. 7-13) with great interest, and I have some comments. When I was in the Army, a long time ago, I had the bad luck to pull stockade duty, which means I would get stuck 30 feet up in a wooden tower for three hours on, three hours off, for a 24-hour day in hell. They gave us only three bullets, so if four guys were escaping, we were dead meat. It wasn’t hard to stay awake, seeing as the tower was unheated, and I was 24 years old, the three hours went fairly quickly…
Please accept my first-hand field data, presented without any underlying agenda, concerning the physical challenge of being a guard and staying awake. It can easily be done. I know. I’ve done it.
To say, as Ms. Tucker did, that [the guard at Indian Point] was on “a second ring of security around the reactor” is a vague and untelling way to describe the post this guy occupied…and [it needs] a better description of it. This guy was a baggage screener. He was not functioning as a guard, per se. He was not on a vigilance post. He was not responsible for keeping a perimeter unchallenged. He did not pack a rifle or a shotgun. There was no expectation that Mohammed Atta would suddenly appear, screaming at him: “Check my bag, Kaffir!!!”
The guard post with the employee screening gates is far, far inside the fenceline, in a rather hidden and secure position, and anyone approaching to get screened, has already been challenged by a team of guards, minutes before, who intentionally engage in conversation with each entrant, to ascertain if the person has a badge, seems alcohol-free, carries no weapons, contraband, etc. Any entrant so challenged, and passed, will park their car and enter the screening station.
If the guard on this post died of a heart attack, the machines still would have to see a matching palm print, matching a badge stripe and an employee ID number—or else nobody could make the big steel gates rotate.
The floor-to-ceiling steel gates are computerized, and are tapped into the station database. The guard does not OK your entrance, the machines do that. The guards on this screener post act mainly as a motivator, for the boisterous union crowds to submit to the protocol and to act nominally normal. (On Monday at 7 a.m. the place is a madhouse.)
On Sunday at 2 p.m., with the outer-campus vehicle barriers activated, nobody can even drive into the Indian Point parking lots. With no shift turnover expected until 3:30 p.m., the baggage screener post is a totally isolated backwater.
I feel bad for [the guy] that he drifted off. I feel good for Indian Point, and the public, that NRC thought it was a good idea to do “backshift” snap inspections. NRC proved to us all that the system works.
The nuclear plant control room is a bright, open place, with 24-hour camera surveillance, great decorum, a special three-point communication language all its own and a strictly white-shirt dress code… For someone to actually sleep in this room, or even to casually sit, would be, to me, inconceivable. But how could you guys know? Well, now you know.
—Name withheld for security reasons
Shame on You, Kelly
What bloody awful language! Who gave you the permission to write for a magazine? You are disgusting, but even more pathetic is the fact that you are ignorant.
—Sashi
Guarding the Truth
I read Becca Tucker’s nuclear security piece, “Yawn Patrol,” (Nov. 7-13) with great interest, and I have some comments. When I was in the Army, a long time ago, I had the bad luck to pull stockade duty, which means I would get stuck 30 feet up in a wooden tower for three hours on, three hours off, for a 24-hour day in hell. They gave us only three bullets, so if four guys were escaping, we were dead meat. It wasn’t hard to stay awake, seeing as the tower was unheated, and I was 24 years old, the three hours went fairly quickly…
Please accept my first-hand field data, presented without any underlying agenda, concerning the physical challenge of being a guard and staying awake. It can easily be done. I know. I’ve done it.
To say, as Ms. Tucker did, that [the guard at Indian Point] was on “a second ring of security around the reactor” is a vague and untelling way to describe the post this guy occupied…and [it needs] a better description of it. This guy was a baggage screener. He was not functioning as a guard, per se. He was not on a vigilance post. He was not responsible for keeping a perimeter unchallenged. He did not pack a rifle or a shotgun. There was no expectation that Mohammed Atta would suddenly appear, screaming at him: “Check my bag, Kaffir!!!”
The guard post with the employee screening gates is far, far inside the fenceline, in a rather hidden and secure position, and anyone approaching to get screened, has already been challenged by a team of guards, minutes before, who intentionally engage in conversation with each entrant, to ascertain if the person has a badge, seems alcohol-free, carries no weapons, contraband, etc. Any entrant so challenged, and passed, will park their car and enter the screening station.
If the guard on this post died of a heart attack, the machines still would have to see a matching palm print, matching a badge stripe and an employee ID number—or else nobody could make the big steel gates rotate.
The floor-to-ceiling steel gates are computerized, and are tapped into the station database. The guard does not OK your entrance, the machines do that. The guards on this screener post act mainly as a motivator, for the boisterous union crowds to submit to the protocol and to act nominally normal. (On Monday at 7 a.m. the place is a madhouse.)
On Sunday at 2 p.m., with the outer-campus vehicle barriers activated, nobody can even drive into the Indian Point parking lots. With no shift turnover expected until 3:30 p.m., the baggage screener post is a totally isolated backwater.
I feel bad for [the guy] that he drifted off. I feel good for Indian Point, and the public, that NRC thought it was a good idea to do “backshift” snap inspections. NRC proved to us all that the system works.
The nuclear plant control room is a bright, open place, with 24-hour camera surveillance, great decorum, a special three-point communication language all its own and a strictly white-shirt dress code… For someone to actually sleep in this room, or even to casually sit, would be, to me, inconceivable. But how could you guys know? Well, now you know.
—Name withheld for security reasons
Shame on You, Kelly
What bloody awful language! Who gave you the permission to write for a magazine? You are disgusting, but even more pathetic is the fact that you are ignorant.
—Sashi
