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Y-12 Guards Fail to Protect HEU Supplies During Test
Guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., performed poorly during a security exercise last month, a government watchdog organization said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 2, 2003). According to the Project on Government Oversight, the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance last month conducted an inspection of the Y-12 guard force. The test found that the guard force “could not adequately protect” stockpiles of highly enriched uranium at the plant, according to POGO. “Witnesses described the Oak Ridge test results as ‘pretty ugly,’” POGO said in a press release. A major security concern at the plant is the presence of six aging buildings that store large amounts of highly enriched uranium despite not being designed to do so, POGO said. The group also said that if terrorists gained access to one of the six buildings, they could develop an improvised nuclear weapon “in minutes” (Project on Government Oversight release, Jan. 15). U.S. Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis refused to comment on POGO’s allegations. “I haven’t been briefed on what the tests resulted in,” Davis said. “I can’t comment on any specific test … I’m not going to comment on the specifics of any allegation by an interest group that doesn’t have first-hand knowledge of the DOE’s … security activities,” he said (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, Jan. 16).
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