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U.S. Energy Department Considers Consolidating Nuclear Material Storage Sites
The U.S. Energy Department is considering consolidating the number of sites that possess weapon-grade uranium and plutonium because of concerns that the facilities are vulnerable to terrorist attacks, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, March 17). In the last year, the Energy Department has revised its assumptions about the capabilities of possible terrorist forces attacking departmental sites. The U.S. General Accounting Office, though, is set to report today that U.S. intelligence agencies have estimated a far higher terrorist threat to U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories than has been considered by the Energy Department in its recent security planning, according to the Times. A classified directive issued last year ordered the Energy Department to improve the security of U.S. nuclear weapons materials by consolidating them at fewer sites than the current seven locations, according to congressional sources. Department officials said yesterday that while security at the facilities is “strong,” they are considering reducing the number of sites where weapon-grade material is stored. Earlier this year, the Energy Department decided to remove weapon-grade materials from a facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, department spokesman Brian Wilkes said. “It is part of the consolidation process that we are doing,” Wilkes said. “We are always driving to reduce our nuclear materials,” he said (Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, April 27). The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced late last month that the materials removed from the TA-18 facility at Los Alamos would be sent to a facility at the Nevada Test Site. The agency is set to begin shipping the first half of the material to the Nevada Test Site later this year in an effort scheduled to last 18 months. “Getting this material out of TA-18 and to Nevada will assist NNSA in more quickly establishing critical national security missions in Nevada while consolidating special nuclear materials in a newer, more secure facility,” NNSA chief Linton Brooks said in a statement (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, March 31).
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