Video of Sleeping Guards Shakes Nuclear Industry

Washington Post:

Kerry Beal was taken aback when he discovered last March that many of his fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were taking regular naps in what they called "the ready room."

When he spoke to supervisors at his company, Wackenhut Corp., they told Beal to be a team player. When he alerted the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, regulators let the matter drop after the plant's owner, Exelon, said it found no evidence of guards asleep on the job.

So Beal videotaped the sleeping guards. The tape, eventually given to WCBS, a CBS television affiliate in New York City, showed the armed workers snoozing against walls, slumped on tabletops or with eyes closed and heads bobbing.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[securityguy]

01:04 PM on 01/07/2008

The question that now needs to be asked is; how many more facilities such as this around the country is being "protected" by sleeping guards? When one considers that over 80% of this country's critical infrastructures are being secured by the private sector, one wonders how many of these companies are as willing to look the other way as they apparently did at Wackenhut. It is also time, quite obviously, for some serious insight and auditing of nuclear facilities such as this. It is unfathomable why Exelon would go along with the cover-up. If anything, their reaction should have been quite the opposite -they should have been horrified to learn that security guards were not doing their job in a professional and responsible manner.

[wadenelson1]

10:54 AM on 01/04/2008

It's the people in this world who REFUSE to be team players that stand a chance of making a difference, invariably at an enormous personal cost. This guy will never work in security again; he may never work again.

Whistle-blowers should receive a lifetime salary from the industries they report on. That would give those industries economic reasons not to lie, cheat, steal, or sleep on the job guarding nukes, airports, and cover up having done so.

[getoffmedz]

10:17 AM on 01/04/2008

These sleeping guards and their supervisors must be brought up on terrorism charges! Now!

Simple as that.