Nuclear Security Fixes Urged

["Gerry Blackwood" <gpblackwood@HOTMAIL.COM>]

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-na-nuke27apr27.story



THE NATION

Nuclear Security Fixes Urged

Fearing that arms labs are vulnerable to attack by terrorists, the U.S.

considers relocating stockpiles of plutonium and enriched uranium.

By Ralph Vartabedian

Times Staff Writer



April 27, 2004



Amid growing concern that nuclear weapons labs are vulnerable to a

terrorist attack, senior Energy Department officials are seriously

considering major steps to improve security - including the removal of

plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Lawrence Livermore National

Laboratory and other weapons sites.



A classified directive issued late last year ordered the department,

which already was examining the security of its weapons-grade nuclear

materials, to consider consolidating them in fewer locations, according

to congressional sources.



Energy officials said Monday that security at their facilities was

"strong." But they acknowledged that they were reviewing proposals to

improve protection by consolidating the sites where the government

stored plutonium and highly enriched uranium - the elements essential to

a nuclear bomb.



The pace of improvements, however, has left many outside experts and

leaders in Congress dissatisfied.



Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the House national

security subcommittee, said that the system remained vulnerable and that

the Energy Department was underestimating the threat it faces. Shays'

committee is to have a hearing on the matter today.



The Energy Department has nuclear materials in at least seven major

weapons sites across the nation, but Livermore - 44 miles southeast of

San Francisco and surrounded by residential communities - is closer to a

major metropolitan area than the others.



In the last year, the Energy Department has increased its assumptions

about the size and firepower of terrorist teams that could assault its

labs. Government officials now say that anyone bent on attack probably

could use high-powered explosives to punch holes though reinforced

concrete walls and then be able to penetrate razor wire fencing and

defeat the most sophisticated electronic surveillance systems.



But the General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, will report today

that the threat posed by terrorists against the nation's weapons labs is

estimated by intelligence agencies to be far more lethal than what the

Energy Department has accepted in its most recent planning for security.



The bomb-making materials at Livermore have received particular

attention, based on concerns about the site's vulnerabilities. The

materials are kept in a fenced area known as the Superblock, situated

about a quarter-mile from a residential tract.



Unlike the security forces at other weapons sites, Livermore's personnel

do not have certain high-powered weapons, door-breaching explosives or

helicopters to defend the site. Superblock is packed into the dense

Livermore complex, making it tougher to defend than remote facilities,

security experts said.



The most serious concern is that a highly trained suicide terrorist team

could penetrate Superblock or any Energy Department site and construct a

crude bomb known as an improvised nuclear device.



During a 2002 Senate hearing, Energy Department weapons experts

estimated that a bomb with a yield of 1 kiloton could be built in

minutes by terrorists once they gained access to the materials. Such a

bomb would destroy the lab, the surrounding city and cause tens of

thousands of casualties, the experts warned. A lesser, although still

lethal threat, would be a "dirty bomb," in which radioactive materials

would be dispersed into the air.















Gerry Blackwood

New York, New York



"Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over, but continually 

expecting a different result."  -- Sigmund Freud



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