<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'></p> PHOENIX, Nov 2 (Reuters) - The Palo Verde nuclear power plant, the largest in the United States, was sealed off on Friday after security guards found a pipe bomb in a worker's car as he tried to enter the facility, officials said.</p> The Maricopa County Sheriff's Department said the small bomb was found in the bed of a pickup truck of a contract worker shortly before 7 a.m. local time.</p> </p> The FBI and the sheriff's department are investigating but have yet to say whether the worker intended to explode the bomb or if it was a device capable of being detonated.</p> The pipe bomb has been removed from Palo Verde, which is located about 50 miles west of Phoenix.</p> "There is no threat to the plant," said Jim McDonald, spokesman for Arizona Public Service, which operates Palo Verde. He added that the public was not in danger.</p> Captain Paul Chagolla of the sheriff's department said, "Our examination and preliminary testing shows it is a viable improvised explosive device," commonly known as a pipe bomb.</p> The plant, which has three nuclear reactors, continued to operate, APS said.</p> Victor Dricks, spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the NRC was "monitoring the response of the operator" but did not see any threat of danger to the public.</p> Two of the three reactors at Palo Verde were not in operation Friday morning. One is in a refueling that will continue until the second half of December, and another was to return to the power grid as early as later today, an APS spokeswoman said. The third reactor is fully operating, she said.</p> With a combined electricity production capacity of about 3,900 megawatts, the three reactors can make enough electricity to serve between 1.5 million to 2 million homes mainly in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.</p> </p> APS owns 29.1 percent of Palo Verde and gets that share of its generation, followed by the Salt River Project (17.5 percent), Edison International's (EIX.N: Quote,Profile , Research) Southern California Edison Co (15.8 percent), El Paso Electric Co (EE.N: Quote,Profile , Research) (15.8 percent), PNM Resources Inc's (PNM.N: Quote,Profile , Research) Public Service Co of New Mexico (10.2 percent), Southern California Public Power Authority (5.9 percent) and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (5.7 percent).</p> </p> </div></p> Source: Reuters</p>
I'm waiting for the first attempt to link the pipe bomb to the Bush administration. My guess is that they will use the reason that it was suppose to distract to the public from focusing on all of the truth the 9/11 nuts jobs have been producing.</p>
