BALTIMORE (Map, News) - The company operating several nuclear power plants in southern Pennsylvania, including Peach Bottom and Three Mile Island, has fired its security company amid an ongoing probe into guards caught sleeping on duty at Peach Bottom.

Illinois-based Exelon Nuclear terminated its contract Friday with Palm Beach Fla.-based Wackenhut Security. The transition will begin in February at the Three Mile Island power plant and be completed by July, said Craig Nesbit, an Exelon spokesman.

“We had done an assessment about a year ago ... and the situation at Peach Bottom caused us to go back and do an even more intense evaluation of Wackenhut and their management practices,” Nesbit said. “It was the situation at Peach Bottom that pushed us over the edge.”

From March to September 2007, Peach Bottom guard Kerry Beal had made several attempts to report that he had seen several of his fellow guards sleeping on duty at the nuclear plant, just six miles north of the Maryland border. In September, WCBS in New York aired a tape Beal had made of guards sleeping in a “ready room” near the reactor.

An investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that several supervisors who received reports of sleeping guards had failed to notify their superiors, and at least one had discouraged further complaints.

Nesbit said that there had not been indications of similar problems at any of the other plants Wackenhut was guarding.

In addition to the Peach Bottom plant, Exelon operates the Three Mile Island and Limerick power stations along the Susquehanna River, and the Oyster Creek nuclear plant on the New Jersey shore. The rest of its plants are in Illinois.

Wackenhut issued a statement Friday saying the Exelon decision was not a surprise and would provide an opportunity for Wackenhut to improve its operations.

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com