Afghan incident raises questions about private security at Mich. nuclear sites

The Palisades nuclear power plant near South Haven. (Nuclear Regulatory Commission photo)

Wackenhut, the private security company whose ArmorGroup employees were recently caught partying and neglecting security at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, is also responsible for guarding many nuclear facilities in the United States including Michigan’s Palisades power plant near South Haven. For several years, government oversight bodies, labor groups and whistleblowers have warned that the company’s lax behavior at nuclear plants endangers public safety.

“A frightening reality of this orgy of intoxication is that this same corporate sanctioned culture is guarding nuclear power reactors,” Michael J. Keegan of Don’t Waste Michigan said after learning of Wackenhut’s ArmorGuard scandal in Afghanistan. “The focus appears to be on creating the illusion of ‘security’ not actually providing it.”

In a 2005 letter to then-U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called Wackenhut guards “the corporate equivalent of the Keystone Cops” and asked that use of the company at nuclear facilities be reconsidered.

“In the past year alone,” Markey said, “Wackenhut personnel have been found cheating on security tests, altering security training requirements, violating [Department of Energy] regulations, failing at security exercises and retaliating against whistleblowers — why hasn’t the company been permanently barred from guarding nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials?”

In 2003, Entergy Corp. (NYSE:ETR), which owns the 725 megawatt pressurized water reactor near South Haven, ended a contract it had with Wackenhut at its Indian Point plant outside New York City after an investigation found that only 19 percent of the security officers stated that they could adequately defend the plant.

In 2007 Wackenhut guards were filmed sleeping on the job at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and after an investigation revealed numerous security problems, the Exelon Corp. terminated it’s contract with Wackenhut.

Wackenhut’s website claims that it provides services to the D.C. Cook nuclear plant in Berrien County, however Cook spokesman Bill Schalk said the company terminated it’s contract with the company this spring.

Last year Cook fired one Wackenhut officer for harassment and suspended another for abuse of the company computer policy, Schalk said.

Palasides spokesman Mark Savage confirmed that Wackenhut is responsible for security at that plant.

The Service Employees International Union represents security guards at some Wackenhut facilities and has been detailing the company’s unsafe business practices for years.

In a 2004 report titled “Homeland Insecurity: How the Wackenhut corporation is compromising America’s nuclear security,” SEIU states:

Despite the high level of public concern over homeland security, the single largest supplier of security officers to sensitive U.S. nuclear facilities is a private firm that has overseen frightening security lapses, presided over training cutbacks, and tolerated lax security measures at multiple nuclear sites throughout the United States.

The report goes on to describe a company-wide practice of forcing employees to work overtime — sometimes 12 hours per day for many days on end.

SEIU points out that in 2002 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission launched an investigation of security practices at Palisades in response to a sharp up-tick in employee complaints about security guard working hours and Fitness-for-Duty concerns.

A 2008 Washington Post report found that that despite the many security problems at Wackenhut guarded nuclear facilities, in 2007 the company won a five-year long $549 million contract to protect the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge facility.

In a telephone interview Thursday afternoon, Wackenhut spokesman Lew Pincus claimed that the company’s operations at the Kabul embassy “don’t have anything to do” with the security work it performs in the United States.

Hovewer, this Knoxville News report describes how the company attempted to deal with staffing shortages at the Kabul embassy by transferring Wackenhut security guards from work at the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee.

This move, which was expected to result in a need for overtime work by other employees at Oak Ridge, was approved by the National Nuclear Security Administration, according to the report.

On his blog on Thursday, Frank Munger reported that staff at Oak Ridge remain ready to transfer to Afghanistan.

“It’s incredible that Wackenhut still has any nuclear power plant security contracts whatsoever,” said Kevin Kamps of the watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. “It certainly leaves Michiganders and the Great Lakes at increased risk of a catastrophic radioactivity release, given the well documented security shortcomings at Palisades.”