Nearly All Operations at Weapons Lab Suspended

The director of Los Alamos National Laboratory on Friday ordered an indefinite suspension of virtually all operations at the nuclear weapons facility, a day after announcing that the disappearance of two computer disks had forced a halt to all classified research there.

In a memo sent Friday evening to Los Alamos employees, director Peter Nanos acknowledged his action was “extraordinary” but said it was necessary to ensure security and safety at the troubled facility, which is run by the University of California.

In a separate incident, laboratory officials confirmed reports from a watchdog group that a student intern was injured this week while working on an experiment at the lab. The young woman, who was not identified, suffered retinal damage when a laser that was believed to be off struck her eye, a lab spokesman said.

The intern was examined by doctors and returned to work at the lab the same day, spokesman Kevin Roark said. And while her injury did not directly prompt the action to suspend work at Los Alamos, it did contribute to the decision, he said.

The latest incidents come at a particularly sensitive time for the University of California, as the contract for managing Los Alamos goes out to bid. UC has run the lab on a no-bid contract for the federal government for six decades, since the dawn of the nuclear age.

But after a series of much-publicized security lapses and management failures at the lab, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced last year that he had decided to put the Los Alamos contract out for bid when it expires in September 2005.

UC has not decided whether to compete for the contract.

Los Alamos officials said the lab was continuing to investigate the disappearance of the classified computer disks. The loss was discovered July 7 during preparations for an experiment in the weapons physics division. Officials have said they don’t believe the disks were removed from the lab.

Nanos and other lab and UC officials have declined to specify the nature of the information on the disks, or whether it involved nuclear weapons research. But they have described the loss as “very serious,” and Nanos has expressed frustration at the failure of some lab employees to follow its rules for handling classified material.

In his memo to employees, Nanos wrote that on recent trips he has made to Washington and California to explain the incident to Congress, the Energy Department and the university, he has emphasized that “this willful flouting of the rules must stop, and I don’t care how many people I have to fire to make it stop.

“Frankly, no one understands how we have gotten ourselves into this mess,” Nanos wrote.

He said he had decided to expand the work stoppage beyond classified activities to ensure that the lab was operating safely and meeting its national security obligations.

Each section will be required to complete a detailed risk assessment before it is cleared to resume work.

Two top Energy Department officials, including Deputy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow, are scheduled to visit the lab early next week, along with a Congressional delegation led by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The visits were prompted by the latest security lapse, officials said.

“We are deeply disturbed by these incidents,” said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an Energy Department agency that oversees the labs. “Responsibility for solving these problems lies with the lab, and we support the lab director’s comment that he will hold employees fully accountable for their actions.”

At Los Alamos, Roark said employees would continue to work at the lab during the suspension but would be undergoing training on lab procedures and policies, rather than normal work. Activities related to the facility’s power plant, infrastructure work and a few sensitive experiments will continue, he said; virtually all else will be halted.

Roark said apart from occasional forced shutdowns at the lab over its history because of fires or other natural disasters, Friday’s announcement appeared to be unprecedented. “No one here has ever heard of it,” he said.