Intruders jump fence at U.S. nuclear reactor with bomb-grade fuel

Two people jumped a security fence at a GE Hitachi research reactor near San Francisco, the U.S. nuclear power regulator said on Thursday, raising concerns over a plant that is one of the few in the country that uses highly enriched uranium, a material that could be used to make an atomic bomb.

The intruders jumped a security perimeter fence at the Vallecitos reactor in Alameda County on Wednesday afternoon, a 1,600-acre (647.5-hectare) site about 40 miles (64 km) east of San Francisco, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on its website in a security threat notice. Shortly afterward the intruders "exited the area when being approached by security prior to being detained," it said. The plant notified local law enforcement and state emergency services about the event.

The NRC notice did not say that the plant is one of the few in the country to use highly enriched uranium or HEU. Such plants have been under pressure from nonproliferation interests to convert to low-enriched uranium, or LEU, a material that cannot be used to make a bomb. The NRC and GE Hitachi Nuclear, a venture between General Electric Co and Hitachi Ltd, did not immediately respond to questions about how much HEU is used at the plant. The NRC limits the amount of unirradiated HEU at research and test reactors to less than what would be needed to build a nuclear bomb device.

The security significance of the event at Vallecitos was unclear, but "it highlights the continuing danger posed by nuclear reactors fueled with nuclear bomb-usable materials such as highly enriched uranium," said Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist and nuclear power safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists advocacy group. "These reactors should convert to safer fuels or shut down," he said.

In a letter to the NRC in April, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Jeffrey Smyly, a regulatory compliance manager at GE, said that there was no funding available from the U.S. Department of Energy to convert the reactor fuel to LEU.

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