Once filled, the 126-ton casks will be hauled, one at a time, to a hockey rink-size concrete pad in a shallow wooded valley about three-quarters of a mile away. Connecticut Yankee says this is the safest location on its 500-acre property. But, in light of a post Sept. 11, 2001 world, watchdogs are asking why the company isn't doing more.

At a recent Community Decommissioning Advisory Committee meeting, Sal Mangiali, a member of the Citizen's Awareness Network, presented Connecticut Yankee officials with the following scenario:A small group of men walking through the woods carrying explosives in nothing bigger than suitcases.

"A small valley could receive an assault from 360 degrees with guys using rocket launchers," said Mangiali.

Each cask is designed to hold 24 fuel-rod assemblies. The NRC estimates when all the casks are in place, the storage site will contain roughly 1.3 billion curies of radioactivity. A curie is an amount of radiation equal to the disintegration of 37 billion atoms.

The Chernobyl reactor contained about 9 billion curies, and estimates on the amount of radiation it released into the environment range from the 80 million curies reported by Russian authorities to 9 billion, as believed by Kennedy Maize, an analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

According to Ed Wilds, the Department of Environmental Protection's director of the Division of Radiation, a Chernobyl-like catastrophe at Connecticut Yankee couldn't happen if the casks were simply pierced with a high-powered hunting rifle. Only a massive fire could transport the radioactive material to the surrounding area.

"To have an off-site release you need a motive force that would cause the material to leave the container. It's dry. You can have a hole, but that would not necessarily release radioactive material," said Wilds.

But explosive weapons are exactly what people like Mangiali are concerned about.

The radioactive waste will be protected with about two feet of reinforced concrete and 3.5 inches of carbon-steel liner.The casks are designed to withstand the force of a 4,000 pound car or a telephone pole slammed into it at 126 miles per-hour during a tornado, according to Connecticut Yankee pamphlets.

Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Massachusetts, says various infantry weapons designed to penetrate bunkers and tanks could easily shatter the casks and start a fire.

To anticipate such worst-case scenarios, Mangiali and Thompson are asking the NRC and designers of dry cask storage facilities to separate the containers into smaller clusters and sink them into a mound of earth and gravel called a berm.

At the CDAC meeting, Keith Heider, vice president of Operations and Decommission-ing at Connecticut Yankee, said that he was meeting with the NRC officials regularly on matters of security, but the nature of the discussions was classified.

Meanwhile, construction on the concrete pad, designed to support the casks close together in several rows, continues unabated.

"If the NRC comes down with some new regulations we will have to comply," said Connecticut Yankee spokesperson Kelley Smith.

Wilds, who has sat in on security meetings where NRC and Connecticut Yankee officials were present, said many potential terrorist scenarios, including those proposed by Mangiali and Thompson, are being evaluated.

"That is being looked at with a detailed analysis. Once that is finalized, there will be requirements placed on facilities like Connecticut Yankee," said Wilds.

According to Wilds, the NRC will probably not specify how Connecticut Yankee should secure its site. Rather, it will specify the type of security threat for which they want Connecticut Yankee to be prepared.

"They (the NRC) will tell them, 'You have to convince us that this security measure will meet our requirements.'Not every requirement is structured so as to say you have to have equipment X," said Wilds.

To contact Matthew Higbee, call (860) 347-3331 ext. 223 or e-mail at mhigbee@middletown press.com.