By DPA
San Francisco : The largest nuclear power plant in the US was placed on lockdown after security guards found a bomb in the car of a worker entering the facility, the plant’s operator said.
Guards discovered the capped metal pipe as the contract employee arrived for work at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. As a precautionary measure, the plant operators instituted a seven-hour lockdown that prevented anyone from entering or leaving.
Police in the Maricopa County sheriff’s office were questioning the suspect.
Jim McDonald, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service (APS), which operates the plant, Friday said that security officials carried out a full sweep of the massive plant during the lockdown, and that no further devices had been found. The lockdown was lifted at about 3 p.m. Friday, he said.
The plant declared a “notification of unusual event”, the lowest of four emergency classifications. Authorities later confirmed that the pipe bomb was “a credible explosive device”.
Law enforcement officials who are investigating the event removed the device from the plant.
The bomb was lying in plain sight of plant security guards, Mark Fallon, an APS spokesperson, said in broadcast remarks.
“Our security personnel acted cautiously and appropriately, demonstrating that our security process and procedures work as designed,” Randy Edington, APS executive vice president and chief nuclear officer, said in a statement. “These actions are clearly in line with our goal of ensuring the health and safety of the public and our employees.”
Government regulators said that security precautions at Palo Verde had worked.
“From what we’ve seen, the security guards were alert and attentive and took appropriate actions when their suspicion was aroused,” said Victor Dricks, a regional spokesman for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
All of the more than 100 US nuclear plants were “at a normally high-level security” after Friday’s incident, Dricks said from Arlington, Texas.
With a combined electricity production capacity of about 3,900 megawatts, the three reactors serve some four million homes mainly in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.