U.S. Nuclear Panel Closes Online Library

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has shut down its online document library, pending a review to determine what potentially sensitive documents should be removed because they might be useful to terrorists, the agency said Tuesday.

While the agency's Web site does not contain classified material, the NRC "is widening its review to remove additional information that could potentially be of use to a terrorist," the agency said in a statement.

The action came after a report by NBC that among the items found on the NRC Web site were detailed information on the location of radioactive substances, generally used in medicine and for industrial purposes, that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb.

In some cases, the data included detailed building diagrams that pinpointed the location of the material in hospitals and other facilities, according to the NBC report.

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Most of it was completely useless to terrorists. This is really about preventing anti-nuke activists from having easy access to info on problems at the nuke power plants.

NRC Suspends On-Line Library Due to Security Concerns


NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission suspended its on-line library for several weeks to remove potentially sensitive information from its Web site due to security concerns, a spokesman at the federal nuclear watchdog said Wednesday.



The NRC is "widening its review to remove additional information that could potentially be of use to a terrorist," it said this week, adding that no classified material is now or ever has been on its Web site.


The agency has licensed several organizations to use radioactive materials for industrial and medical purposes. The documents on the Web site contained lists of what the NRC authorized the companies to possess and the locations of that material, spokesman Scott Burnell said.


He said the materials in question were not of the quantity found at a nuclear power plant.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=9&u=/nm/20041027/ts_nm/utilities_nrc_website_dc