InfrastructureFines for nuclear operator

Last week
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) fined Florida Power & Light Co $130,000 after security officers at the company’s
Turkey Point nuclear power plant near Miami were found sleeping on the job. The
NRC said its investigators found that on multiple occasions from 2004 through
2006 “security officers at Turkey Point were willfully inattentive to duty
or served as lookouts so other officers could sleep on duty.” An NRC
inspector specifically saw on 6 April 2006 a security officer sleeping on
duty while posted in a vital area of the reactor, the agency said. In a letter
to the company this week, the NRC said it “considers this matter to be a
significant security concern” and sleeping security personnel “cannot
be tolerated.” The company has thirty days to pay the fine or file a
 protest.

Dick Winn, FPL’s nuclear spokesman, said the six
security officers accused of sleeping are no longer at the plant and their
actions do not reflect the professionalism of the other workers. Winn said the
company has improved the screening and testing of its security force. “We
take this seriously,” he said. In January, the agency also fined FPL
$208,000 for other security violations at the Turkey Point facility. Those
violations related to two events in 2004 and 2005, when security personnel
disabled weapons by removing or breaking firing pins, which the NRC said would
not have allowed the workers to protect the plant. The Turkey Point power plant
is located on Biscayne
Bay
near Homestead, about 30 miles southwest of Miami.