arclightWhen I started in the nuclear safety field, my focus was on Generic Letter 88-20, the Individual Plant Examination (probabilistic risk assessment) program for building and analyzing detailed statistical/logical models of nuclear plants, looking for subtle vulnerabilities not caught by traditional methods. Generic Letters are "shadow" regulation - issues some people in the NRC think are important but nothing the Commission wants to go through the effort of explicitly regulating. So they issue "Generic Letters" which don't _technically_ require a response but act as a gently coercive wink-wink-nudge-nudge "it'd be cooler if you did..." ... suggestion. The same way "Nice powerplant - it'd be a terrible shame if anything happened to it..." isn't technically a threat.
Anyway, I was wandering down Memory Lane and looked at some of the othe GLs the NRC issued around that time.
May I present to you Generic Letter 88-19 "Use of Deadly Force by Licensee Guards to Prevent Theft of Special Nuclear Material" https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/gen-letters/1988/gl88019
I'd like you to compare the suggested response to people actively trying to steal plutonium, etc. (circa 1988) with how ICE treats children and bystanders during non-criminal immigration investigations.
You are literally safer trying to break into a nuclear plant to steal plutonium than you are standing within 500' of an armed member of ICE minding your own business.
Phawx
Lyle Solla-Yates
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Technology Connections
Dan Gillmor
