Security officers at TVA nuclear power plants will soon be prohibited from carrying handguns as sidearms for a primary weapon, a change that one senior nuclear officer at the Watts Bar plant says could make officers more vulnerable.
But TVA and other nuclear plant managers insist the industry is moving to better weaponry and safety systems to protect America’s 99 operating nuclear reactors from terrorists or other attacks.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates seven nuclear reactors in Tennessee and Alabama, plans to phase out by the end of the year handguns now carried by security officers at the Sequoyah, Watts Bar and Browns Ferry nuclear plants. The TVA plants are among 96 reactors nationwide where armed guards are moving to higher-powered weapons to secure nuclear plants.
The changes are being made after an industry-wide safety review of plants conducted by the chief security officers for most nuclear plants. Although TVA and other nuclear operators declined to discuss specifics of the changes being made for security reasons, they insist that what changes are being made are designed to make the plants and their employees safer.
“Security officers will still be armed appropriately in accordance with their protective strategy,” said Sue Perkins-Grew, the senior director of security and incident preparedness for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group for the nuclear power industry. “Since the 9/11, our nuclear plants are even more secure and safer today on the strength of more than $2 billion in additional security investment. That includes substantial physical enhancements, hiring of thousands of additional highly trained security officers, procurement of more sophisticated access systems, adding more diverse and multiple weapons and close coordination with local, state and federal law enforcement and intelligence experts.”