STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Police arrested two maintenance workers on suspicion of plotting sabotage after they tried to enter a nuclear power plant yesterday with traces of a powerful explosive like that used in the 2005 London transit bombings, officials said.
The plant's operator, OKG, said no bomb was found and the incident did not pose a threat to the Oskarshamn generating station.
Experts said a bagful of the suspected explosive would not be powerful enough to damage a nuclear reactor but could wreak havoc in a power plant's control room.
Police with bomb-sniffing dogs searched the plant 150 miles south of Stockholm and were examining a substance detected on a plastic bag carried by one of the workers. It was believed to be triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, which can be extremely dangerous even in tiny amounts.
The two men were contractors hired to do maintenance work on one of the facility's three reactors, which was shut down May 11 for an annual check, plant spokesman Roger Bergman said.
Police said one suspect was born in 1955 and the other in 1962. Both are Swedish.
