[iwar] [fc:Terror.worries.spur.nuclear.facility.move]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-08-14 06:38:51
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<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0208130251aug13.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed">http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0208130251aug13.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed> 

Terror worries spur nuclear facility move
Los Alamos site called vulnerable
By Michael Kilian
Tribune national correspondent

August 13, 2002

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- From a clifftop overlook called Robbie's Roost, Technical Area 
18 spreads across the canyon floor below like the set of an action movie, complete 
with barbed wire, armed guards, an array of secret laboratories and, at the rear, 
three huge structures housing tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.

But this is no movie. Since its role in the Manhattan Project that produced the 
world's first atomic bomb more than a half-century ago, TA-18--a major part of the 
Los Alamos National Laboratory complex--has been one of the most important and vulnerable 
components of the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

Now, after months of insisting that the security here can stand up to anything, 
the federal government is preparing to move TA-18 to the Nevada desert because of 
fears of terrorist attack. It will be the first time the U.S. has moved a major nuclear 
facility, and a formal announcement is expected this week.

The General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, is examining security 
at Los Alamos and the nine other national nuclear weapons labs, which fall under 
the jurisdiction of the Energy Department. A spokesman for the GAO said its investigation 
should be complete by Jan. 1.

In addition, congressional committee leaders are preparing hearings for this fall. 
Lawmakers are concerned that the facilities have repeatedly failed rudimentary security 
tests, such as mock raids staged to test their defenses.

The Washington-based Project on Government Oversight and other citizen watchdog 
groups have long warned of inadequate security at the labs, which conduct research, 
develop new technologies and test the readiness of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Activists applaud the impending move of TA-18, though they say more needs to be 
done.

"This is the most sensible move DOE has made toward making the nuclear weapons complex 
more secure," said former Energy Department official Peter Stockton, now a Project 
on Government Oversight consultant.

Despite the move, Los Alamos security chief Stanley Busboom insisted late last month 
that defenses at TA-18 were more than adequate. The facility is being moved, officials 
said, because maintaining the high level of security was too expensive.

"After 9/11, we did a tremendous amount of work in a very short period of time in 
really beefing up security here," he said. "It was good before, but when you had 
a government-wide, nationwide threat, we reacted to it."

Scientists at Los Alamos play a crucial role in ensuring that the U.S. nuclear arsenal 
has not deteriorated. International treaties forbid testing by actually detonating 
bombs; instead scientists run computer simulations and test the weapons' non-fissile 
components.

Since Sept. 11, TA-18 also has played a major homeland security role, developing 
devices to detect terrorist nuclear weapons and training emergency personnel to respond 
to potential terrorist nuclear attacks.

TA-18 is 50 miles northwest of Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico and a metropolitan 
area of 148,000 people. According to Stockton, who served as special assistant for 
security under Clinton administration Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, the area 
would be highly vulnerable to detonation of a nuclear device or a radioactive "dirty 
bomb."

Experts also fear that TA-18's location at the bottom of a canyon would make it 
susceptible to commando and aerial raids by well-organized teams of terrorists.

A June 28 letter from Los Alamos Director John Browne to Everet Beckner, deputy 
administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, suggests Browne and 
other officials already had made up their minds to move TA-18 to Nevada, calling 
that "the best overall decision to meet the post September 11th challenges for the 
long-term security of nuclear activities associated with TA-18."

TA-18 was established in Parajitos Canyon when few in the United States had ever 
heard of Los Alamos, and the entire laboratory grounds were restricted. Some parts 
of the laboratory are now accessible to the public, including office buildings in 
the town of Los Alamos.

The weapons site is protected by a security force of several hundred--the exact 
number is secret--provided by a private company. From 1992 to Sept. 11, security 
forces at the labs were reduced nearly 40 percent--from 5,640 to about 3,500 nationwide--while 
the labs' nuclear inventory increased 30 percent.

Though the move to a pre-existing nuclear test site about 90 miles from Las Vegas 
would help secure TA-18 operations, another nuclear weapons facility, TA-55, which 
has a less vulnerable hilltop location, will remain on Los Alamos' grounds.

But the problem appears to be broader than Los Alamos; security has failed regularly 
in mock exercises at other labs as well.

In addition to Los Alamos, the government owns Sandia National Laboratories in New 
Mexico and California; Argonne-West near Idaho Falls, Idaho; Lawrence Livermore nuclear 
weapons lab outside San Francisco; the Rocky Flats lab in Denver; the Oak Ridge facility 
near Knoxville, Tenn.; the Savannah River lab near Augusta, Ga.; the Pantex complex 
at Amarillo, Texas; and the Hanford lab at Richland, Wash.

The Department of Energy supervises the labs but hires others to handle day-to-day 
operations--the University of California runs Los Alamos, for example.

Mock intruder exercises showed flaws in Livermore's defenses, Stockton said. In 
one test at Rocky Flats, Navy SEALs were able to cut a hole through the perimeter 
fence and escape with enough simulated nuclear material to make several bombs. They 
weren't discovered until after they had left the site.

During the Cold War, the missions of labs such as Los Alamos were divided evenly 
between nuclear weapons and other scientific endeavors. Now, 85 percent of the work 
is nuclear because of the Energy Department's counterterrorism program and because 
the labs are responsible for the testing and maintenance of America's nuclear weapons 
stockpile.

The U.S. stopped manufacturing nuclear weapons in 1990 and ceased underground nuclear 
arms testing in 1992. Since then, the testing and maintenance of the U.S. arsenal 
has fallen to Los Alamos, Sandia and Livermore.

"Traditionally, nuclear weapons have had a shelf life of five to 10 years," said 
Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark. "They destroy the old ones and replace them with 
new ones. But now the U.S. no longer manufactures nuclear weapons, so the stockpile 
has to be maintained in good working order."

That requires a complicated and top-secret testing program in which weapons are 
carefully dismantled and their components subjected to a variety of experiments--including 
some involving explosions--to prove their viability.

The weapons are brought to and from the labs by surface transportation under extreme 
security and secrecy, though the vulnerability of that transport to terrorism presents 
another worry.

Some members of Congress say the Energy Department has a long way to go in protecting 
its facilities against terrorists.

"It seems as though little has been done to remedy the security problem," Rep. Edward 
Markey (D-Mass.) wrote President Bush in a recent letter. "Nuclear weapons material 
at Department of Energy sites remains vulnerable to theft or onsite construction 
and detonation of `dirty bombs,' or homemade nuclear weapons."


Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune 

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