A worker at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating plant outside of Phoenix was being questioned by police after what appeared to be a pipe bomb was found in his truck:
The worker was stopped and detained at the entrance of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, said U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Victor Dricks. Security officials then put the nuclear station on lockdown, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving the facility.Authorities described the device as a small capped pipe that contained suspicious residue.
Capt. Paul Chagolla with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said sheriff’s officials have rendered the device safe and that investigators were interviewing the worker.
The plant was operating normally and there was no threat to the public, Palo Verde spokesman Jim McDonald said.
Palo Verde is the largest nuclear plant in the US. Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the plant was considered such a strategic target that National Guard troops were deployed to protect it.
What kind of damage could a small pipe bomb do? No direct threat to the reactor can be imagined. However, damage to specific control systems by someone who knew precisely where to set off a device could conceivably cause some problems. Probably not a meltdown or any release of radiation. But the very act of setting off a device inside a nuclear plant would be statement enough.
The point is, that’s the kind of information that a terrorist would know if an actual attack were planned. Such vulnerabilities would not be easily deduced but could be inferred by knowledgeable confederates.
This may be nothing more than some one with a weird hobby who accidentally happened to leave one of his creations in his truck. Or the guy could be a member of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, in the US for years, employed at the plant by design, and has now been activated to kill us all.
My thinking tends toward the former. But that should in no way lessen the significance of the event. Our nuke and chemical plants are soft targets and the terrorists know it. They’ve been hardened since 9/11 but has it been enough? Maybe the best thing to come out of this is a re-examination of security at these plants in order to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect ourselves.
UPDATE
Malkin is reporting that nearby schools were also in lockdown. Must have been a tense few minutes there after they found the device.
Might do an update if the situation warrants it.
4:40 pm
I had a free moment and your sweet self passed through what passes for my mind…
This post reminds me of something i read in City Journal a few quarters back…
It was an essay examining our electrical grid and its essential vulnerability. This is due to the fact that the grid just kind of “grew”—jury-rigged, as more need developed—in a time before terrorism could be imagined.
We will be vulnerable for awhile. However, I suggest you read “The Bottomless Well…Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy” by Peter Huber and Mark Mills.
PJ O’Rourke (lordy, I do wish I could write like him) says of the book:
“Here is an insight of genius: the real source of energy is human intelligence. It’s infinitely renewable. It produces no emissions except a puff of CO(2) when smart people say ‘AHA!’ But there can be an energy crisis nonetheless—due to a severe intellect shortage when public policy makers think about energy.”
Sigh…and when they’re in charge of formulating their odious energy programs.
6:26 pm
If nuclear power plants are soft targets, then there is no such thing as a hard target. Reinforced concrete is not soft and razor ribbon is not easy to play with.