Nuke Material May Leave Labs

The Energy Department is considering removing nuclear materials from some of the nation's weapons labs because of worries about security, a newspaper reports.

The Los Angeles Times quotes congressional sources who say a classified directive last year told the department to consider moving the plutonium and enriched uranium stored in at least seven sites around the country.

The watchdog Project on Government Oversight has asked the Energy Department to move nuclear material to sites like a test facility in Nevada or underground storage areas in Tennessee and South Carolina. Last year, the department removed weapons material from a site at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Times reported.

The Times reports that since Sept. 11, security worries about the weapons labs have changed.

Where the fear once was that terrorists might try to steal nuclear material, now the concern is that an armed force could enter the lab and rig a small bomb within minutes. Such a device could kill or injure thousands.

The new fear means lab security teams, instead of simply making sure no nuclear material is taken from the lab, now must concentrate on preventing terrorists from getting in.

The Energy Department says its defenses are strong, but assumes that terrorists would be able to blast through concrete walls and elude sophisticated surveillance equipment.

The General Accounting Office is due to report Tuesday that even those assumptions understate the scope of the threat facing the labs.

One of the nuclear labs, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, keeps its nuclear material in an area only a quarter mile from a residential neighborhood. The lab is only 44 miles from San Francisco, and lacks high-powered weapons or a helicopter to defend the site.

GAO found last year that "ongoing confusion about roles and responsibilities" as well as security staff shortages at all the nuclear weapons sites — both the labs and other facilities — continues to hamper security oversight.

In January, the Energy Department conducted a widespread review of security at the nuclear weapons laboratories after reports of hundreds of missing keys, some of which could allow access to sensitive areas.

The security worries come after about five years of controversy over management at the nation's nuclear facilities.

They began with the 1999 investigation into Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-born scientist who was imprisoned for nine months while under investigation. He was never charged with spying.

The next year, two computer hard drives with secret nuclear-related material disappeared, only to turn up later behind a copy machine.

After reports of financial abuse by several employees, equipment that was missing or unaccounted for, and the firing of two lab investigators who raised concerns about porous management, the Energy Department announced last year it would take competitive bids for the contract to run Los Alamos lab for the first time in its history.

An internal audit in February found that the restart of bomb-grade uranium processing at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge is five years overdue and about $300 million over budget.

Y-12's uranium processing operation was shuttered in 1994 after an accidental release of hydrogen fluoride raised safety concerns. The original estimate was to restart the program by December 1998 at a cost of $119 million.

In the report last June, GAO found that one problem for lab security was that the agency did not always check whether the contractors who run the labs had taken the required steps to fix security lapses. In 43 cases from 1999 to 2002 reviewed by the GAO, contractors took the steps in less than half.

In addition, the GAO found, the nuclear security agency "has shortfalls at its site offices in the total number of staff and in areas of expertise, which could make it more difficult for the site offices to oversee safeguards and security effectively and to ensure that the agency fully knows security conditions at its sites."