Bomb alert at largest US Nuclear Plant

[karlos]

Bomb alert at largest US N-plant
Sat, 03 Nov 2007 09:08:19


The Palo Verde nuclear power plant
The Largest nuclear power plant of the US has been sealed off after security guards found a pipe bomb in a worker's pickup truck.

The worker was trying to enter the Palo Verde nuclear power plant when the security guards found the bomb in his car.

The nuclear facility remained sealed off for much of Friday but the lock-down was lifted on Friday afternoon.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said it appeared that an engineer, who tried to enter the plant with the pipe bomb early Friday morning, was not planning to explode the device.

The investigation into the incident continues, but it looked as if the engineer, who had worked at Palo Verde as a contractor for a year, wasn't a terrorist, Capt. Paul Chagolla was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The engineer had access to sensitive areas of the plant and was detained Friday by the sheriff's office and his apartment was searched. The result of the search was not yet known.

Arizona Public Service, which operates Palo Verde said the plant, which has three nuclear reactors, continued to operate.

The Palo Verde nuclear plant is located about 50 miles west of Phoenix. With a combined electricity production capacity of about 3,900 megawatts, the three reactors can make enough electricity to serve between 1.5 million to 2 million homes in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.