Video of Sleeping Guards Shakes Nuclear Industry (HOMER SIMPSON ALERT)

Washington Post ^ | 01/04/08 | Steven Mufson

[Badeye]

‘Kerry Beal was taken aback when he discovered last March that many of his fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were taking regular naps in what they called “the ready room.” ‘

Lets define ‘ready room’.

The facility has multiple security shifts working. Half of the assigned security force are manning posts, the other half are in a ‘ready room’. This is a holding area, more or less. It keeps a group of security officers ‘ready’ to respond en masse to a reported security breech, anywhere within the facility.

I’d be upset if they found the security officers asleep at the GATE, or at an ACCESS CONTROL POINT, or in the console room (armoured room where all video and alarm feeds terminate).

This is no big deal, folks. A ‘ready room’ may have a television, a micro wave, and what we called a ‘gee dunk’ in the Navy (candybars, potato chip vending machine).

As another poster noted above, company’s won’t hire internal security, seeing it as a waste of profit. So they ‘outsource’ which gets Wackenhut, or Allied Barton, or Securitas involved - contract security in other words.

The contracts call for low pay, even at a nuclear facility.

You get what you pay for, in short. But this is a simple ‘media hit job’ by a disgruntled former employee, thats all.