Arizona nuclear plant on lockdown after pipe bomb found on worker

By Karyn Chenoweth Nov 3, 2007, 1:37 GMT

CNN reports that the nation's largest nuclear power plant in Arizona detained a contract worker with a small pipe bomb in the back of his pickup truck Friday.

Authorities stopped the worker - a procurement engineer about 60 years old and originally from South Carolina - at the entrance of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, about half a mile from the containment domes where the plant's nuclear material is stored, plant spokesman Jim McDonald said.

CNN reports that security officials put the nuclear station on lockdown, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving the facility.

Authorities described the device as a six-inch capped explosive made of galvanized pipe that contained suspicious residue. Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, speculated it was home-made.

"If this thing went off in the bed of the truck, it certainly would put a hole in it," Mangan said. "It was rather crude in construction, but it could certainly injure somebody."

Maricopa County Sheriff's Capt. Paul Chagolla said the pipe was not hidden in the truck. He said the worker normally drove a motorcycle to work but was in a truck Friday because of cool weather.

Authorities are interviewing the man and were given consent to search his apartment in Phoenix - but he but had not been arrested according to Chagolla.

"There's no information to indicate that there's domestic terrorism at hand," he said.

In Washington, the Department of Homeland Security also said there was no known terrorism link.

Sheriff's officials rendered the device safe, Chagolla said.

"Our security personnel acted cautiously and appropriately, demonstrating that our security process and procedures work as designed," Randy Edington, the chief nuclear officer for plant operator Arizona Public Service Co., said in a news release.

Workers must pass through two security checkpoints to get inside one of the plant's three containment domes.

Palo Verde is the nation's largest nuclear power plant both in size and capacity. Located about 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix, the plant supplies electricity to about 4 million customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California.