Published Friday, November 2, 2001

FPL got its way Thursday after threatening by e-mail to sue the creator of a website for nuclear power-plant workers unless he removed drawings of its two nuclear plants by 5 p.m., Oct. 31.

``I complied. Who wouldn't, with a letter like that?'' said Michael Rennhack of St. Paul, Minn., whose website provides a number of services to nuclear power plant workers.

Among chatty comments, resumes and job postings on the message board of Nukeworker.com, Rennhack was surprised to find this sternly worded ultimatum:

``FPL demands that you immediately and permanently remove all FPL drawings of the St. Lucie and Turkey Point nuclear plants from your website. . . . If such materials have not been removed [by 5 p.m. EST, Oct. 31] . . . FPL will immediately initiate litigation. . . . FPL will also seek damages and attorneys fees and costs.''

Rennhack first commented on the e-mail to his Nukeworker.com readers: ``They say you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. I guess you can't teach that to a lawyer.''

Then he responded to FPL attorney Mitchell Ross, telling him that he had removed all satellite photos, directions to the facilities and photos inside the plants -- something he has also done for 12 other nuclear plants on the website.

``But all the others asked me in a pleasant, positive way. Only the Florida people demanded immediate action, threatening to sue and charge me the costs,'' he said.

FPL external affairs manager Rachel Scott said she agreed the attorney's letter was stern, but that the tone was unavoidable given these scary times.

``We can't mess around with the possibility that terrorists could misuse the information. So, we made our point strongly and clearly to get the job done,'' said Scott.

FPL's concern about terrorist misuse of the information mirrors that expressed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Not only has the NRC closed down much of its own website, which included nuclear power plant locations and outage and fuel consumption information, it has issued directives to nuclear power plants in 40 states to take information off their websites.

This removal of what was previously considered public information has triggered a reaction among freedom of information advocates as well as those who depend on the NRC website for information to do business.

``You can limit access to information, but this doesn't remove the actual danger,'' said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a watchdog nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that keeps tabs on the federal Office of Management and Budget and the removing of government information from websites.

Bass says he worries that withholding information only gives the perception that things are safer.

The Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) organization in Columbia, Mo., which keeps databases of public information for journalists, is expressing similar concerns: ``We can understand erring on the side of caution since Sept. 11 and taking information off the web, but the national priority should be to reduce the actual dangers at nuclear and chemical plants, not the information. We're concerned that information will be removed, while flaws in public safety won't be addressed,'' said IRE executive director Brant Houston.

It is this very issue that U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, addressed Wednesday in an amendment to the NRC security bill: ``Today, the current [plan] . . . that is supposed to be used to design safeguard systems fails to adequately reflect the true nature of the terrorist threat to our nuclear plants,'' Markey wrote in the amendment, taking issue with what the NRC plan does not guard against.

``What about waterborne threats. . . and what about airborne threats -- like a commercial airliner filled with jet fuel? The [plan] says nothing about air- or water-based threats and the NRC has told me that none of the current reactors are capable of withstanding a hit from a large commercial airliner.''

NRC spokesman Sue Gagner says that the regulatory agency is reviewing the plan to protect nuclear power plants, as well as reviewing what to put back on the NRC website.

But Mike Rennhack says that, regardless of the security changes and restoration of the NRC website, he's in no hurry to get the Turkey Point and St. Lucie power plant information back on his own site.

``After that letter from Florida, I'll never put their stuff back up again,'' he said.