A Boiling Water Reactor schematic. This one is SOOO much cooler than the black and white schematics we fixed. Ours were just Xerox copies.

General Electric builds boiling water reactors (BWR), a type of nuclear power plant. I drew fixed the seriously degraded schematics that trained the new power plant employees.

No, I’m not a nuclear scientist. I’m not an electrician. I had skills as a pen and ink artist. That’s it.

Yes, that should scare you.

No, I was not an exception. None of us working there had any experience in nuclear power or electrical backgrounds.

My step-mother wrote the technical documents that went with the schematics. She didn’t have any experience in nuclear power or electronics either.

Oh, I almost forgot – I was a teenager.

AND they gave me a fairly high security clearance.

HA! So much for thorough background checks.

On the news this morning they mentioned there’s a new computer worm specifically designed to attack nuclear power plants and utilities. Stuxnet is the name of the malicious software. (Industrial Virus Revives Power Grid Hacking Fears.)

Really Hackers/Terrorists? It’s totally lame of you to have wasted all that time developing some software – one that has been detected, mind you. All you had to do was send some kid down there to apply for a job. Any job.

I was a teenager with no real skills. This was my first real job that wasn’t babysitter or Radio Shack clerk. (Supposedly, drinking doesn’t count as a skill. Whatever.) I started out copying the manuals and documents. My supervisor at GE Nuclear taught me to draw in pen and ink after I got the job.

It’s not exactly a well-guarded secret facility. Seriously Terrorists/Hackers, do a little research before investing all that time developing software. Any kid could get in.