| Abstract | Although the September 11, 2001, attacks are becoming a distant memory, it would be a big mistake to forget that the danger to the United States from both international and domestic terrorists remains very real today. Unfortunately, U.S. nuclear power plant owners are experiencing collective denial about their facilities’ vulnerability to sabotage attacks that could cause widespread radiological contamination.Although the September 11, 2001, attacks are becoming a distant memory, it would be a big mistake to forget that the danger to the United States from both international and domestic terrorists remains very real today.Accordingly, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry’s leading trade association, has been heavily pressuring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ease up on inspecting and enforcing critical security regulations in order to cut costs.NEI has called for abolishing the NRC’s force-on-force testing program and replacing it with exercises conducted by the plant owners themselves.Maintaining a full complement of security officers round the clock—that is, five shifts of a few dozen guards each—costs millions of dollars annually.In 2007, the NRC revised its public definition of the DBT to be “a determined violent external assault, attack by stealth, or deceptive actions, including diversionary actions, by an adversary force” that can act in multiple teams and is composed of “well-trained (including military training and skills) and…
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