It was especially troubling being at TVA. The management seemed intent to watch us, but they let plenty of people abuse their sick time (it was a pre-retirement ritual to use up ones' sick time) and had a tendency to promote those that couldn't perform the job just to get them out of a position where they could potentially hurt somebody. They continually kissed the union's butt and rewrote our procedures over and over again to accomodate the weakest link.
We weren't ever given a solid reason for the cameras, but security was one of the inferred reasons. My answer to that was that if they were concerned about security, they ought to issue everybody a sidearm (of course, being in Tennessee, about half of us were armed anyway).
I guess it falls under the same reasoning they used to obtain hazmat suits with air tanks, but only supplied enough of them for about 1/2 of the people in the room (presumably, the 1/2 that were armed would have a higher chance of getting one of these if events dictated their necessity). Those only lasted a couple of years since they didn't keep up our annual training at donning and doffing the suits. Your homeland security tax dollars at work!
Hyper security is the latest trend. I have to pass my card 5 times to get into the control room here at FE, and had to do so twice and scan my palm at TVA. But our guard is not armed, and we have signs all over the building here in FE that state that firearms are not permitted on the premises. I don't know about you, but I'd feel a lot more secure if half the workforce had the means to sling lead at any wannabe bad guy that got in the building.
This is strange. At Davis-Besse and Point Beach the security forces were armed to the teeth. Kewaunee also. In fact, at almost every nuclear plant I have been to they were heavily armed and ran training exercises all the time, hostage-taking, threats to structures, outside force intrusion, etc. Even the Battelle Research Labs had armed security personnel.