To provide for the strengthening of security at nuclear power plants.

1. Inserts new text wherever appropriate

   Inserts

   Inserted: SEC. . STRENGTHENING SECURITY AT NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.

   Inserted: (a) Findings.--The Senate finds that--

   Inserted: (1) A taped interview shown on al-Jazeera television on September 10, 2002, included a statement that al Qaeda initially planned to include a nuclear power plant in its 2001 attacks on the United States.

   Inserted: (2) In 2001, David Kyd of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that if a fully fueled large jetliner hit a nuclear reactor "then the containment could be breached and the cooling system of the reactor could be impaired to the point where radioactivity might well be set free."

   Inserted: (3) Dr. Edwin Lyman, a physicist and former scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute has noted that if a nuclear power plant were hit by a large commercial passenger jet, "significant release of radiation into the environment is a very real one."

   Inserted: (4) Operating nuclear reactors contain large amounts of radioactive fission products that, if dispersed, could pose a direct radiation hazard, contaminate soil and vegetation, and be ingested by humans and animals.

   Inserted: (5) According to the organization Three Mile Island Alert, a nuclear power plant houses more than 1,000 times the radiation that would be released in an atomic bomb blast, and the magnitude of a single terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant could cause over 100,000 deaths.

   Inserted: (6) The federal government has offered Governors potassium iodide pills to distribute to people living near nuclear power plants in case of an attack, but no legislation has passed to protect against an attack in the first place.

   Inserted: (7) In the 108th Congress, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved bipartisan legislation to improve nuclear plant security. No action was taken by the full Senate.

   Inserted: (8) Last month, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee again approved bipartisan legislation to improve nuclear plant security.

   Inserted: (b) Sense of the Senate. It is the sense of the Senate that the Congress should pass legislation to assess the terrorist threats at each nuclear power plant and to establish new federal standards to protect against those threats.

   The amendment doesn't say where this goes; the clerk decides.

   Original wording

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