The World - News from June 24, 1988

Four British scientists repeated a charge they first made in 1985--that at least two tons of British plutonium, enough for 400 nuclear warheads, is unaccounted for and could have been switched from civil to military use. The Department of Energy and the Central Electricity Generating Board, which controls nuclear power stations in Britain, denied the charge when it was first made, and the Energy Department said this time that the scientists’ figures were based on a “miscalculation” arising from the use of a “wrong computer program.” The department added that “there is no crossover of plutonium from civil to military use.”