Security
In 1977 three Greenpeace activists canoed into the site to demonstrate the lack of security.
On 23 Sep 2001, a man whose boat capsized on Lake Huron near the Bruce complex squeezed through a gate, entered an office building and phoned for help—all undetected.
The pre-9/11 mandate of the security team was to delay attackers for 17 minutes, until local police could respond. Reliance was on passive measures such as fencing and locks.
The "transformed" post 9/11 security team is described as being larger than the police force of the city of Kingston, i.e. equivalent to the force of a city of 100,000. Force members are permitted to carry firearms, and have powers of arrest. The force possesses armoured vehicles, water craft, and the plant is now triple-fenced. In May 2008, the Bruce Nuclear Response Team (NRT) won the U.S. National SWAT Championship (USNSC), defeating 29 other teams from 4 countries, the first time a Canadian team won an international SWAT event. They won again in 2009, 2010, and 2011.
In 2010, about 40 contract workers were fired or suspended for inappropriate internet usage, raising questions about the security of the plant.
Post 9/11, tours of the plant area were discontinued, although there is a visitor centre outside of the site.
According to the Bruce County emergency plan, "The Municipality of Kincardine will coordinate the emergency response concerns of a nuclear emergency situation resulting from an accident at the Bruce Power Site in the Municipality of Kincardine.". Kincardine is required to maintain a warning system within 3 km of the plant, and has a network of 10 warning stations equipped with sirens and strobes.
A variety of radiation monitoring measures are in place. Milk samples from local farms are sampled weekly. Drinking water at treatment plants in Kincardine and Southhampton is sampled twice daily, and tested weekly. Ground water is sampled from several surface water, shallow and deep well locations. Aquatic sediment and fish are analysed, as well as livestock feed, honey, eggs, fruits and vegetables.
Read more about this topic: Bruce Nuclear Generating Station
Famous quotes containing the word security:
“The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are,—1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and, 3. Hope to all.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)