Security lax at U.S. nuke weapons plant: watchdogs

Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:42pm EThttp://i.today.reuters.com/images/spacer.gif

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...ews-newsOne-11

By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Security has been so lax at a government-run nuclear weapons facility that investigators from a private watchdog group were able to loiter unchallenged in front of the laboratory last fall, the Project on Government Oversight said on Monday.

A report by the group, known as POGO, said about a year ago investigators drove to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which holds 1,000 cans of uranium-233, and parked in front of the facility. They were separated from the nuclear weapons complex only by a chain-link fence and "walked around for about 15 minutes" before guards approached them as they were leaving.
The report concluded, "If the investigators had intended to do harm, they could have quickly detonated a device to blow up the building," which POGO said would have yielded an explosion about the size of the World War Two Hiroshima blast.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy, which controls the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said that last month the facility came into compliance with a government security plan set forth in 2003.

DOE spokesman John Shewairy said the POGO report was a "rehash of what they've talked about before. There have been changes since then."

He said POGO was making "assessments based on what they see."

"There are things not public they wouldn't know about in doing their assessment," Shewairy said.
But Peter Stockton, a senior investigator for POGO, said in a telephone interview that as recently as last week, DOE officials in Washington told him conditions had "not changed significantly" to shore up the Oak Ridge facility.

The POGO report also said another government facility near the laboratory, known as the Y-12 National Security Complex, will not come into compliance with security standards until 2013, well beyond this month's deadline.

The facility, POGO said, is home to most of the U.S. stockpile of highly enriched uranium, "enough to make approximately 14,000 nuclear warheads."

A DOE spokesman for Y-12 was not immediately available for comment.
POGO calls itself an independent nonprofit group that has exposed corruption and waste, especially in military spending by the government.

Stockton said Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican, "deserves credit" for getting $25 million inserted into a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would be used to move uranium out of Oak Ridge to safer places. The material is a byproduct of past weapons-making, Stockton said. The money has not yet been approved by the Senate.

Among recommendations in the POGO report: reduce the terror threat at Oak Ridge by more quickly "downblending" the highly enriched uranium, hire more guards, install high-caliber machine guns and other systems to stop terrorists who breach security.
Stockton said that when POGO investigators drove up to the Tennessee plant last year, they parked in front of the building and "two armed guards were leaning against their SUV." Those guards then "got into their vehicle and drove off" without asking Stockton and his cohorts any questions.

Jag