Security Upgrade for Nation’s Nuclear Labs

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected today to outline a sweeping upgrade of security at the nation’s nuclear weapons sites, a move that reflects growing concern over the facilities’ vulnerability to terrorist attack.

The planned actions include the closing of several nuclear facilities, an improvement in cyber security for sensitive data and an overall strengthening of gates, guns and locks throughout the nuclear weapons complex, sources said.

The nation’s two major nuclear weapons labs -- Los Alamos in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California -- each will get key upgrades to site security, sources said. But Abraham is expected to stop short of completely removing plutonium from Lawrence Livermore.

A post-Sept. 11 review of security at the nation’s nuclear weapons sites showed that highly trained teams of terrorists could puncture existing fences, walls and vaults with relative ease. Once inside, they could create improvised nuclear bombs that could destroy a lab and surrounding communities.

In a report last week, the General Accounting Office warned that the Energy Department had moved too slowly to upgrade security and that the current level of protection fell short of the terrorist threat postulated by the intelligence community.

In the past, the main concern in the weapons sector was to prevent the theft of plutonium or uranium. But the strategy now has shifted to denying intruders access to the materials and preventing crude weapons from being built on site. That means the safeguards in place at many facilities are no longer considered adequate.

The planned security upgrades originated at the highest levels of the Energy Department. The weapons labs, production plants and assembly sites for nuclear bombs are run by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the department.

Abraham has put a tight lid on details of the speech, withholding the information from all but a few senior congressional leaders. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) -- a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons programs -- was not briefed, a spokesman said Thursday.

Abraham also is expected to call for the decommissioning of the TA-18 facility at Los Alamos, an area that stores plutonium, conducts research and trains intelligence officials on nuclear fission. The site includes several fortified blockhouses, a vault where plutonium is kept and several administrative buildings.

The order would call for the removal of the plutonium to the Nevada Test Site’s device assembly facility, an underground weapons plant that has been largely unused since the end of nuclear bomb testing. By some estimates, the New Mexico site contains a ton of plutonium or highly enriched uranium that could be used by terrorists to construct a crude weapon.

The site is nestled in a canyon that critics have said would be difficult to defend against a capable team of terrorists armed with high-powered weapons.

The TA-18 facility would be turned over to the environmental management program at the Energy Department, the office that handles remediation efforts at former nuclear weapons plants in the U.S. The move is not entirely unexpected, since the Energy Department told Congress this month that all the plutonium and uranium at TA-18 was being removed.

Sources said Livermore National Laboratory would undergo a number of security upgrades, including improvements to the firepower of its security staff and a consolidation of plutonium and highly enriched uranium at the site. But complete removal of the bomb-grade materials from the site reportedly was not part of the plan.

Abraham reportedly was considering such a move after outside experts and public interest groups expressed concerns that Superblock, the high-security area that hold’s Livermore’s weapons material, was difficult to defend.

Superblock is surrounded by dual rows of high fences and razor wire. But the protection force at Livermore lacks the high-powered weapons that other Energy Department sites use, partly because there are housing tracts near the facility. Livermore is 44 miles southeast of San Francisco and surrounded by residential communities.

A number of security experts have suggested in interviews that shooting up the neighborhood would represent a smarter option than allowing terrorists to blow up the whole city.

In addition to Los Alamos and Livermore, it is believed that Abraham will call for the decommissioning at South Carolina’s Savannah River Site of a nuclear reprocessing plant, commonly known as a canyon. The highly contaminated plant is considered a security risk and is no longer used in bomb production.

A department advisory on Abraham’s speech said the security upgrades would also affect the Y-12 complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where massive amounts of highly enriched uranium are stored. Critics have suggested that the Oak Ridge plant build a fortified underground storage facility. The advisory also said that the Pantex nuclear weapons assembly site in Texas and a site in rural Idaho would be on the list to get security upgrades.

However, all the decisions appeared to be somewhat fluid as of late Thursday.