ATOMIC ENERGY/Specialized Officers Provide Value-added Service at Decommissioned Power Plant

In 1954, eleven New England electric utilities banded together to form the Yankee Atomic Electric Company. Responding to then President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” Program, they were on the cutting edge of technology. Originally expected to operate for just six years, the Rowe, Massachusetts facility provided electricity from 1960 until 1992.

But power plants can’t just shut down.  Instead a long decommissioning process –as stipulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) - is necessary to help ensure the environmental safety of the area. At the beginning of the atomic age, the expectation was that spent nuclear fuel could be reprocessed and used for energy.  By the 1970s, however, the potential for misuse created a major shift in policy; spent fuel was now considered nuclear waste and posed both an environmental and security threat.  ,

Today, the former plant has been demolished, the site restored and Yankee Atomic is an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI); the decommissioning was made official in August of 2007.  For over 20 years, Yankee Atomic has relied on the specialized training and knowledge of Securitas USA Energy Services officers to help provide safety and security.  The now greatly reduced staff, guard what appears to be a placid lake shore from two very specific security threats: sabotage of the large concrete casks and theft of the spent nuclear fuel contained within.

Securitas USA Energy Services is the nation’s oldest specialized nuclear protection provider and currently protect six of the nation’s ISFSI sites as well as seven operating nuclear plants.  Officers receive extensive security training in accordance with the NRC requirements and additional training in everything from dealing with spills to emergency communication with federal and local agencies. But for all their high-level training, one of the biggest concerns is quite mundane.  As Bob Mitchell, Yankee Atomic’s ISFSI Manager puts it “sitting and watching a number of concrete canisters can be very boring.”

“The Securitas staff’s primary mission is to help protect the site and storage fuel” says Mitchell, “Their secondary mission is maintenance of the site itself as well as the equipment.”  These duties include everything from snow plowing and landscaping to machining and carpentry, and allow Yankee Atomic to limit its outside contracts, reaping a number of benefits.  “One,” says Mitchell, “it keeps our cost down; two, it keeps the officers interested and gives them ownership of the site.”

Mitchell, who worked at Yankee Atomic from 1977 to 1997, came back in January of 2007 after ten years supporting the decommissioning and developing a similar program with the Securitas Energy Service staff at Connecticut Yankee, a sister ISFSI site.  Yankee Atomic was in the final stages of decommissioning, and Mitchell needed to both significantly downsize the staff and consolidate their duties. Once again, Bob worked with the Securitas Energy Services management team of Walt Thoma, Area Vice President, and Charlie Rival, Senior Project Manager to build upon the success achieved at Connecticut Yankee. Through a series of discussions held between Securitas and the unionized staff, determinations were made as to the varying skills and interests the staff had that would lend itself to an ISFSI environment. “Everyone does something different outside of work,” he notes, “and when we looked at the skills sets we needed, we found that our officers had those skills already.”  Mitchell compares the system to that used in a firehouse; fighting fires may be the first priority, but the maintenance, cleaning and even the cooking are all essential to success.  “The whole concept is teamwork,” he notes.

Since the decommissioning, turnover has been what Mitchell terms “essentially minimal.”  He credits this to both the opportunity for the officers to engage in secondary interests, as well as the benefits and positive atmosphere Securitas creates for their employees.  “Securitas is customer-oriented and people-oriented; they treat their people well and offer reasonable contracts.” The partnership created by the Securitas Energy Services management team and the ISFSI licensees has paid positive dividends to all.

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