US Nuclear Plants, Pwr Grid On Alert; Operating Normally

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission placed the nation's 104 operating nuclear power plants on heightened alert in the wake of Tuesday's attacks in New York and Washington D.C. An NRC spokesman said there were no known threats to any facilities, adding that nuclear plants are built to withstand a direct hit from an airliner. "We have gone to the highest security level...as purely a precautionary matter," said NRC spokesman William Beecher. "There has been no credible threat against any of these facilities," he said. The NRC security alert came after the Nuclear Control Institute in Atlanta, an industry group, called NRC Chairman Richard Meserve early Tuesday to urge implementation of an emergency plan designed to protect nuclear plants from attack. The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group that oversees power-grid reliability, reported it is operating in "emergency mode" in coordination with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Infrastructure Protection Center. "Power is flowing on the grid," said NERC Vice President David Nevius, who noted the electricity system is working fairly normally except that many companies have shut down their wholesale power trading operations. "The physical facilities have not come under any attack that we know of," said Nevius. "The folks who are operating the system are on heightened alert," he said. The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission canceled its meeting scheduled for Wednesday. FERC Chairman Patrick Wood told Dow Jones Newswires the commission's regional offices are on alert with emergency plans in place to protect U.S. hydropower facilities. Hydropower facilities represent the main oversight concern for FERC, since, under the Federal Emergency Act, the Department of Energy has primary responsibility for security concerns involving the power grid, Wood said. FERC, like most other federal agencies, closed and evacuated it headquarters Tuesday. There was no immediate information from the Energy Department, which is operating under emergency alert.

- Source Dow Jones Newswires