Thank you, Chairman Shays, Ranking Member Kucinich and other members of this committee.

My name is Marvin Fertel and I am senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute. NEI represents over 270 members, including every U.S. utility that owns a nuclear power plant.

I have over 30 years experience working in the electric power and nuclear energy industries. I have visited and am familiar with nearly every commercial nuclear power plant site in this country. Given the importance of security at our nuclear power plants, I generally speak with every nuclear plant’s chief nuclear officer weekly and am getting to know many of their top security managers. During the past three years, the nuclear energy industry has carried out unprecedented and unequalled efforts to review and improve our security.

I would like to start by making clear the importance of nuclear power to our nation. Our nation’s 103 reactors safely and cleanly produce enough electricity to power one in every five homes and businesses in the United States. Many regions are heavily dependent on nuclear energy. For example, about 50 percent of Connecticut’s electricity comes from nuclear energy, and these plants provide an additional benefit of stabilizing the electricity grid.

Notably, nuclear power is the only large-scale source of electricity that is both emission-free and readily expandable. By replacing fossil fuels that produce electricity, nuclear power plants prevent the emission of levels of carbon dioxide equivalent to that from 90 percent of all passenger cars in our country. In addition, the use of nuclear energy reduces our dependence on foreign sources of oil and natural gas.

I would like to emphasize three major points today regarding the security of our nuclear power plants:

• First, nuclear power plants were the most secure industrial facilities in the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and they are even more secure today.
• Second, nuclear power plants serve as a model for industrial security in America. Our plants are far more secure than any other sector of our nation’s critical infrastructure, and have been recognized as such by several independent organizations and security experts.
• Third, while the industry is fully committed to protecting its employees, the public, and its assets, our companies have maximized the level of protection they alone can provide these facilities. Although we coordinate extensively with government entities on security matters, continued emphasis on integrated response planning is necessary, and there are important legal and policy implications to further increasing the security requirements provided by the operators of our plants.

As you know, nuclear power plants were built to be robust and secure: A nuclear reactor is surrounded by several feet of concrete walls and internal barriers of steel-reinforced concrete. They were built to contain the effects of a reactor accident, but also to withstand natural events, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, fires and floods.

Even before the September 11 attacks, every nuclear plant was protected by a security strategy that included protective perimeters, physical barriers, sophisticated access authorization technology and a professional well-armed security force. We conduct background checks on all employees and strictly control access to our plants.

After Sept. 11, the industry—in response to orders issued by the NRC—enhanced security at our plants significantly. Each nuclear power plant is on schedule to meet the requirements of the most recent NRC security orders by the October 29 deadline.

Over the past three years, we have expanded our security forces by 60 percent from 5,000 to about 8,000 security officers at 64 sites. During that time, the industry has spent more than $1 billion to increase the security force and to significantly enhance protection, based on the NRC’s new design basis threat.

My written testimony provides details regarding these improvements at our plants. However, some are considered “safeguards” information and thus not available to the public.

As part of the new security requirements, each plant will conduct multiple force-on-force exercises every year. And the NRC formally evaluates each plant’s force-on-force exercise at least once every three years. In these exercises, the NRC evaluates the execution of the security strategy, the performance of the industry’s security force, and also the performance of the independently trained adversary force used in the mock attacks of the plant.

Given the September 11th attacks, we also significantly increased our cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement. We have worked closely with the NRC, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal, state and local authorities with the goal of building a seamless security defense for our plants. However, additional emphasis on integrated response planning is needed, and there are important legal and policy implications that must be considered as we continue to build that coordinated defense for America’s critical infrastructure.

Mr. Matthiessen discussed in his testimony a new report by Riverkeeper on the consequences of a possible terrorist attack on the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York, and I want to take just a minute to discuss this report.

The industry welcomes meaningful technical analysis of nuclear facilities. However, the Riverkeeper report is the Hollywood equivalent of merging the plots of The Perfect Storm, The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day and trying to sell it to the public as a realistic scenario. Simply, the likelihood of the accident sequence in this report leading to a release of radiation is so incredibly low that it is not credible. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like include for the record an analysis of the Riverkeeper report prepared by leading technical experts.

Finally, the NRC has recognized that the commercial nuclear energy industry has reached the maximum level of security enhancements that can be expected from a private entity. Further increases to nuclear plant security requirements could have serious policy implications. The industry has been working diligently and has committed significant resources to meet new security requirements since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The industry’s security forces are committed to protecting these facilities, but it also is important that there be a period of regulatory stability so that the industry can integrate these new programs fully into the operation of our plants.

In summary, nuclear plants were safe and secure before 9/11—and they are even more secure today.

The protection of our nation’s critical infrastructure should be based on a rational analysis of the greatest threats to public safety and the methods for guarding against them. Hence, I encourage this committee to examine closely the experience of this industry and its regulator as both a model and an opportunity for providing lessons learned as you look to shape policy for protecting other parts of our nation’s critical infrastructure.