NRC: News Release - 2002-075 - NRC Orders United States Enrichment Corporation to Enhance Security

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NRC NEWS U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs	Telephone: 301/415-8200
Washington, DC 20555-0001	E-mail: opa@nrc.gov
www.nrc.gov

No. 02-075

June 18, 2002

NRC ORDERS UNITED STATES ENRICHMENT CORPORATION
TO ENHANCE SECURITY

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an immediately effective Order to the United States Enrichment Corporation to implement interim compensatory security measures for the current threat environment. USEC operates gaseous diffusion plants located in Piketon, Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky, which it leases from the U.S. Department of Energy.

As with NRC's February 25 Orders issued to all commercial nuclear power plants (see press release dated February 26), this Order formalizes a series of security measures that USEC has taken at the Portsmouth and Paducah plants in response to Commission advisories, or on its own, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Additional security enhancements resulting from the Commission's on-going comprehensive security review are also spelled out in the Order.

USEC is required to provide NRC with a schedule within 20 days for achieving full compliance. USEC must also notify NRC within 20 days and justify in writing if it is unable to comply with any of the requirements of the Order, if compliance with any requirement is unnecessary in its specific circumstances, or if implementation of any of the requirements would cause the licensee to be in violation of the provisions of any Commission regulation or the facility Certificates of Compliance, or adversely impact safe operation of the facility.

These security requirements will remain in effect until the Commission determines that the threat level has diminished, or that the current security programs need to be further augmented as a result of the Commission's comprehensive safeguards and security program re-evaluation.

Although specific details are classified and not publicly available, a copy of the unclassified portion of the Order will be posted on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/security/post-911.html, under Orders.