Al-Qaeda:  U.S. Officials Suspect Group Behind Bombings in Saudi Arabia

U.S. officials have said they believe al-Qaeda is responsible for a series of suicide bombings Monday night in Saudi Arabia that killed at least 21 people and injured about 200, CNN.com reported today (see GSN, May 5).

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday he “wouldn’t be surprised” if al-Qaeda was found to be responsible for the attacks.

“I can’t say for certain it was al-Qaeda yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was," Bush said, adding, “the war on terror goes on” (CNN.com, May 14).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made similar allegations after visiting one of the attacked sites. 

“It certainly has all the fingerprints of an al-Qaeda operation,” Powell said.

One U.S. official noted the similarities between Monday’s attack in Saudi Arabia and the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

“Vehicle bombs.  Near simultaneous coordinated attacks.  Multiple locations.  It certainly has the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation,” the official said (Warren Strobel, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 14).

An e-mail sent by an al-Qaeda commander the day before the bombings warning that the group was planning to conduct attacks in Saudi Arabia has also implicated al-Qaeda, according to the Associated Press.

In an e-mail sent to the London-based Al-Majalla magazine, an al-Qaeda operative who identified himself as Abu Mohammed Ablaj said the group had prepared “martyrdom” squads to conduct “guerrilla war” on Riyadh and the United States.

“Beside targeting the heart of America, among the strategic priorities now is to target and execute operations in the Gulf countries and allies of the United States, particularly Egypt and Jordan,” Ablaj wrote in the e-mail.  “The list of assassinations, the raid teams and the martyr operation squads are ready.  The caches of weapons, ammunition, explosives and bombs are plentiful, and the authorities cannot uncover them.  We will start by creating tensions to confuse the security services, then carry out major operations and lethal strikes,” he wrote.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said the e-mail is believed to be credible and implicates al-Qaeda as being behind the attacks (Sarah El Deeb, Associated Press/Boston Globe, May 14).

Some Saudi officials, as well as opponents of the Saudi government, have said that terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden might have personally directed the attacks.

The attacks were the result of a decision by bin Laden to target foreigners and members of the Saudi royal family in his former homeland, where support for him is high, according to Islamist opponents of the government.

“There is credible discussion in jihadi circles that this is the beginning of a new campaign, and that Osama bin Laden has given the go-ahead for a campaign in Saudi Arabia,” said Saad al-Fagui, a British-based critic of the Saudi government (Mark Huband, Financial Times, May 14).

The United States has sent an FBI team to Riyadh to aid in the investigation into the attacks, according to CNN.com.  In addition, the U.S. State Department yesterday ordered that all nonessential U.S. personnel and their family members leave Saudi Arabia. 

“We’re very concerned about additional attacks,” a U.S. official said (CNN.com).

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U.S. Response:  Anti-Terrorism Response Is Lacking, Report Says

U.S. anti-terrorism measures are inadequate and lack resources, according to a recent report by the Justice Department and the Police Executive Research Forum, USA Today reported today (see GSN, May 1).

Specifically, the report said U.S. terrorism task forces are understaffed and don’t have the capability to investigate possible terrorists.  Local and state law enforcement officials used the report to reiterate their concerns that federal officials are working on their own.

“We are more than a year past the terrorist attacks and I’m not alone when I say local law enforcement executives do not feel like they are in the game,” said Massachusetts Public Safety Secretary Edward Flynn, who co-authored the report.  Flynn said local law enforcement “often presumes that federal agencies are withholding detailed, relevant and important information.  We need to work on issues of mutual trust so that we can share what information there is while retaining necessary security and integrity.”

The FBI maintains 66 terrorism task forces to investigate terrorist threats around the country.  The task forces are directed by FBI field office chiefs but are staffed by local, state and federal law enforcement officials.  The report says that these task forces are “inadequate” to address terrorist threats to the United States.

According to the report, the lack of involvement from local police officers stems from their departments’ fears about a lack of compensation.

“The task forces are the best thing we have going,” said Chris Smecker, the highest-ranking FBI agent in North Carolina.  “There is a need for more participation at the local level.  But there should be a way for police departments to be compensated for the officers who are assigned” to the task force units, Smecker added (Kevin Johnson, USA Today, May 14).

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British Response:  United Kingdom Works to Improve Port Security

The United Kingdom has begun a program to improve security at its ports to prevent terrorists from smuggling radioactive materials into the country, the Press Association reported today (see GSN, Feb. 4).

British Customs officials have begun installing detection equipment at ports to prevent radioactive material smuggling, the PA reported.  The equipment had been previously tested in a three-month trial conducted at the British ports of Dover, Felixstowe and Portsmouth.  A Customs spokesman said that more than $160 million has been allocated to improve port security over the next three years (Press Association/London Guardian, May 14).

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Iraq:  Experts Reasonably Certain That Second Trailer Is a Mobile Weapons Facility

There is a “reasonable degree of certainty” that a second recovered Iraqi trailer is in fact a mobile biological laboratory, a U.S. Army general said yesterday (see GSN, May 13).

Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said he had been told by an expert that the trailer — recovered in Northern Iraq last week — was probably a mobile biological facility, as originally suspected.

“The expert I talked to this morning said that he had a reasonable degree of certainty that this is in fact a mobile biological agent production trailer,” Petraeus said during a press briefing in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

He said the layout of the second trailer was “nearly identical” to that of a suspected mobile biological laboratory that had been previously discovered.  The newly found trailer has a “5,000 PSI compressor, 2,000-liter reactor vessel, small feed tank, 3,000-liter water tank and a water chiller,” Petraeus said.

The second trailer also had a consecutive serial number from the first trailer, he said. 

The second trailer appeared to be incomplete when it was recovered, with several welds not finished and shipping plugs still in place, Petraeus said.  In addition, several pieces of equipment from the second trailer appeared to have been looted, he said.

Petraeus also said yesterday that Iraq might have destroyed its chemical weapons stockpiles prior to the war.

“There’s no question that there were chemical weapons years ago,” Petraeus said.  I just don’t know whether it was all destroyed years ago,” he said (U.S. Defense Department release, May 13).

IISS Surprised at Lack of Success in WMD Hunt

Meanwhile, an expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank that issued a report last year describing Iraq’s WMD programs, has said he was surprised by the lack of discovered Iraqi chemical weapons (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2002).

Gary Samore, an IISS expert who helped prepare the institute’s report, acknowledged that no chemical weapons or chemical delivery systems have been found in Iraq and said that they probably would not be found in large numbers, contrary to the institute’s report.

“The absence of chemical weapons was a big surprise,” Samore said.

Samore also said that the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was still continuing and that some important discoveries had been found.  “They have found equipment and material which would have allowed Iraq to revive its programs,” he said.

The institute is neither “nervous nor embarrassed” about its Iraq report, said Director John Chipman.  He added that the report had been cautious in its analysis (Paul Reynolds, BBC News, May 13).

War Still Justified, British Official Says

The discovery of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is not needed to justify the recent war, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today.  When asked if the failure to find such weapons was important, Straw replied, “It’s not crucially important” (Johannesburg Independent Online, May 14).

Sanctions

Meanwhile in Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell met today with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to try to gain Russia’s support for a U.N. Security Council resolution to end U.N. sanctions against Iraq (see GSN, May 12).

Powell is expected to meet again with Ivanov later today before meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Agence France-Presse.  The meetings are expected to include discussions on a U.S.-British-Spanish U.N. resolution to lift U.N. sanctions on Iraq.  Russia has opposed such a move, however, saying U.N. inspectors first needed to return to Iraq to verify that it no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction.

Ivanov today did not comment on his meeting with Powell, but did say that the future of U.S.-Russian relations “belongs to cooperation.”

“Our common interest in the search for answers to global challenges brings us closer together.  No one can fight new threats alone,” Ivanov said.  “We are for a constructive and nonconfrontational dialogue,” he said (Henry Meyer, Agence France-Presse, May 14).

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U.S.-Russia:  Duma Approves Moscow Treaty

The lower house of the Russian Parliament today voted to approve the U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which aims to cut both countries’ deployed nuclear arsenals by two-thirds by 2012 (see GSN, May 13).

Members of the State Duma voted 294-134 to approve the treaty’s ratification, according to Reuters. The U.S. Senate has already ratified the treaty (see GSN, March 7; Reuters/My Way, May 14).

Approval from the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, is still required before Russia can ratify the pact, according to the Associated Press, but no problems are anticipated because the Federation Council has historically followed the Duma’s lead in approving treaties.

During a meeting yesterday with Duma leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the treaty.

“Its provisions enable us to develop our strategic forces at a level of reasonable sufficiency, in line with the country’s economic capabilities and the dynamics of the military and political situation in the world,” Putin said.

Russian Communist Party lawmakers have opposed the treaty’s ratification.  Communist lawmaker Nikolai Kolomeitsev today proposed that the Duma drop the issue, AP reported.

“This treaty is a gift to [U.S. President George W.]  Bush,” said Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov attended today’s Duma debate which was held behind closed doors to allow lawmakers to receive answers to sensitive questions related to Russia’s nuclear forces, AP reported.

In the draft ratification document, the Duma also called for more funding to maintain Russia’s nuclear arsenal on a “level that would guarantee the deterrence against any aggression” (Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 14).

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United States:  House Committee Approves Bush Nuclear Priorities

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Following the lead of their Senate counterparts, the Republican majority of the House Armed Services Committee yesterday largely overcame Democratic challenges and approved new measures to expand nuclear weapon research and to shorten the time needed to prepare a nuclear weapon test (see GSN, May 8).

The action occurred during a continuing markup session of the 2004 defense authorization bill and was accompanied by a candid debate between committee Republicans and Democrats over the merits of researching, developing and building new nuclear weapons.  The Senate Armed Services Committee approved similar measures last week (see GSN, May 9).

In a series of nearly or totally party-line votes, the House committee rejected amendments by Democrats that would have:

*         cancelled $15 million for studying a nuclear weapon for striking deeply buried targets and $6 million for researching and developing new nuclear weapons (the proposal would have used the money to study ways to use conventional weapons for the same purposes);

*         instituted a one-year moratorium on developing all new nuclear weapons in 2004; and

*         required the administration to notify Congress 18 months before conducting a nuclear test.

In another nuclear weapons-related Republican victory, the committee approved a measure to shorten the time needed to prepare a nuclear test from the current 32 months to 18 months.

Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons

In a partial victory for the Democrats, however, the committee passed a measure to allow the Energy Department to conduct research, but not development, of low-yield nuclear weapons, which are those with yields equivalent to less than five kilotons of conventional explosives.  The Bush administration has argued that such weapons would be potentially useful for striking deeply buried targets and chemical and biological facilities.

The measure, approved in a compromise arranged with Representative John Spratt (D-S.C.), would only partially repeal a 1993 law he co-authored that bans some research and development and all production of low-yield nuclear weapons.  The Senate Armed Services Committee passed language that goes further, authorizing a repeal of the ban on research and development.

“We loosened the original prohibition a bit to permit more extensive research, but reaffirmed that it is not the policy of the United States to develop low-yield nuclear weapons,” Spratt said in a statement today.

“The action in the House sends an important message: that the United States is not backsliding towards development of new battlefield nuclear weapons,” he said.

John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, said the compromise arranged with Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) represented a singular win for Democrats who are in the minority.

“The fact that we did not lose everything is something of a victory,” he said, adding the approved language “maintains the intent of the law passed 10 years ago” by not approving development and production of low-yield nuclear weapons.

Indicating some Republican unhappiness with the compromise, Representative Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) called the Senate version of the bill a better one and Representative Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) said she favored a complete repeal, adding, “That seems to be more of the direction the Senate is going in.”

Debate Over America’s Nuclear Role

As the amendments were being considered, Democrats and Republicans engaged in perhaps their most candid debate so far over the Bush administration’s policies to consider producing nuclear weapons that might be used in roles other than deterrence or as a last resort.

Democrats charged that administration-backed measures approved in the bill would signal that the United States is shifting away from supporting international nonproliferation norms, based on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  That treaty’s approach is to encourage countries to abstain from nuclear weapons in exchange for the gradual disarmament of five declared nuclear weapon states, including the United States.

The question, said Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), is whether the United States is committed to nonproliferation or is it seeking one set of rules for itself and another for the rest of the world.

He expressed concern that pursuing new nuclear weapons would “signal to the world there isn’t much of a difference between a nuclear weapon and a conventional weapon.”

Republicans argued consideration of low-yield nuclear weapons, which would produce less surface damage than larger nuclear weapons, is needed for putting the leadership of potential adversaries at risk.

Thornberry suggested the current U.S. arsenal of large-yield weapons “may not be credible.”

Democrats, however, argued that low-yield nuclear weapons would be ineffective against deeply buried targets while still causing devastating collateral damage.

On U.S. Leadership

At least one Democrat argued the United States should lead by example and refrain from developing new nuclear weapons to encourage adherence to global nonproliferation norms.

That view was challenged by Wilson, who argued that strategy has “failed miserably” to persuade certain countries from refraining from attempts to acquire new nuclear weapons, naming Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Russia.

“Burying our head in the sand and hoping our example will persuade others to do the same is folly,” she said.

Thornberry questioned Russia’s restraint in developing new nuclear weapons.

“This argument that we have to lead by example and other countries are going to follow along when we show how great and restrained we are, it hasn’t worked as far as Russia” is concerned, he said.

Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) stated the United States would need to eventually develop and build new nuclear weapons.

“We’re going to have to develop new nuclear weapons after a while, build new systems.  We’ve got aging systems now in our nuclear weapons inventory and we’re going to have to replenish them,” he said.

Weldon, the committee’s second-ranking Republican, however, suggested the idea of developing a new nuclear strategy should be better considered.  Weldon said he would introduce today an amendment to create an independent commission to consider future U.S. nuclear weapons strategy over 18 months.

“Perhaps it is time to step back and create a broader commission to assess where we are headed with respect to nuclear weapons,” he said.

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Pakistan-North Korea:  Former Pakistani General Denies Nuclear Cooperation

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — In a sharp rebuttal of longstanding allegations, a former Pakistani general said last month that his country had nothing to gain and much to lose by sending nuclear technology to North Korea.

“It is impossible that you would trade nuclear technology for anything, there is nothing worth it.  Especially nothing from North Korea,” said retired Pakistani Brig. Gen. Feroz Khan, now a visiting scholar at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

The New York Times reported last year that Pakistan had given North Korea nuclear assistance in exchange for missile technology.  U.S. officials recently sanctioned a Pakistani company that Washington accuses of providing the nuclear assistance (see GSN, April 1).

A primary reason that Pakistan would not trade nuclear technology for North Korean missiles is China, according to Khan.  China has opposed the idea of a nuclear Korean Peninsula and maintains close ties with Islamabad.

“One country Pakistan cannot afford to anger at any cost is China … it is certain, we will never do a thing to anger China.  We would lose them as a strategic partner,” he told Global Security Newswire in an interview.

Khan also faulted the United States for its allegations without providing proof of the alleged transfer.  To make accusations as serious as nuclear proliferation, “credible evidence must be presented,” he added.

India-Pakistan

India and Pakistan have been making conciliatory statements recently, but Khan said that a productive and meaningful dialogue that produces a lasting peace will most likely not come without outside pressure (see GSN, May 13).

“There is so much venom and so much hatred, they will have to be brought into a dialogue, and there is no hurry to do that,” Khan said.

He also questioned the idea that the two nuclear-armed states are prevented from engaging in another conventional war because of their nuclear arsenals.  India and Pakistan have fought three wars since achieving independence from the United Kingdom in 1947.

“They think they can push the situation and they believe the other side will accept it.  In this process of brinkmanship, they may be crossing the threshold.  It’s hard to manage nukes in a crisis,” Khan said.

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North Korea:  Roh, Bush Meet Today to Discuss North Korean Crisis

South Korean leader Roh Moo-hyun is to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush today in an attempt to find a common approach to the North Korean nuclear crisis, BBC News reported (see GSN, May 13)

Roh is pushing for a peaceful resolution to the standoff, while Bush has not ruled out sanctions or a military strike against North Korea, BBC News reported (BBC News, May 14).

Reactor Construction Continues

While Washington and Seoul seek a common ground, work is continuing on two nuclear reactors in North Korea that are being provided by the United States, South Korea and Japan under a 1994 deal to freeze Pyongyang’s nuclear activities, the Associated Press reported.

“No one has officially said the deal was dead, and work on the reactor project is ongoing,” said Kim Jong-ro, a spokesman at the South Korean Unification Ministry, who said South Korea has paid $850 million toward the effort so far.

The reactor is being built by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, which is led by the United States and includes South Korea, Japan and the European Union.  There are 605 South Korean, 353 Uzbek and 99 North Korean workers involved in the construction, according to the Associated Press (Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle, May 14).

North Korea Has Several Nuclear Weapons, Former General Claims

A man who said he was a North Korean general before defecting last year to the South claimed that Pyongyang has many nuclear weapons.

“The North Korean army even has tens of nuclear weapons it has developed itself in addition to those made by the former Soviet Union,” the general said in an interview with the Japanese publication Gekkan Gendai.

The general, operating under the pseudonym “An Yong Chol,” said North Korea has four Soviet-made missiles with a range of 8,000 kilometers, sufficient to reach the United States.

The magazine said he was the most senior defector since Hwang Jang Yop, the top ideologue and secretary of the Workers Party, who came to the South in 1997.

Some experts are skeptical about his story.

“The former Soviet Union was most careful not to allow the proliferation of nuclear weapons, even to Warsaw Pact allies,” Hideshi Takesada, a Japanese National Institute for Defense Studies professor, said.  “This may possibly be a defector who has been sent by the North or wants to whip up fear as a gift to the North,” he added (News24, May 14).

Washington Reacts to Proclamation

The United States yesterday said it is “regrettable” that North Korea yesterday declared “dead” the 1991 Joint Declaration for a Non-Nuclear Korean Peninsula, which prohibits both countries from developing nuclear weapons, according to U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.

“It follows North Korea’s violation of its other international nuclear obligations.  And again, I would just say that we urge North Korea, in keeping with the desire of its neighbors, of the international community as a whole, to verifiably and irreversibly terminate its nuclear weapons program,” he added (State Department release, May 13).

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Iran:  Russia Defends Nuclear Assistance to Iran

Russia does not have enough evidence of a clandestine Iranian nuclear weapons program to halt nuclear assistance to Tehran, Russian Nuclear Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said today (see GSN, May 6).

“If the international community gives sufficiently weighty arguments in connection with the Iranian nuclear program not in favor of Iran, we are ready to discuss them” during an upcoming meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rumyantsev said.  “In the course of regular bilateral contacts, the Iranian leadership is constantly assuring us about the exceptionally peaceful nature of its nuclear program.  In addition, the construction of the nuclear power plant in Bushehr has been already placed under IAEA control,” he added.

The IAEA is preparing a report on Iran’s nuclear activities and a meeting would be held in Vienna to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program, Rumyantsev said.

After the report is complete, Russia will discuss “relevant recommendations,” he added (German Solomatin, ITAR-Tass, May 14).

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Russia:  Lewisite Destruction Line Begins Testing

Russian officials have begun to test a lewisite disposal line at a chemical weapons destruction plant in Gorny, ITAR-Tass reported Monday (see GSN, July 29, 2002).

The “testing is being carried out using a neutral medium, without pumping in war gases,” a spokesman for the Saratov region’s information and analysis center on safe storage and destruction of chemical weapons said.

Officials will begin to destroy small amounts of lewisite in the second half of May, and the line will be launched in June, according to ITAR-Tass.  Russia is expected to destroy 20 percent of its chemical weapons stockpile by 2007 (ITAR-Tass, May 12 in FBIS-SOV, May 13).

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Canada:  Decision Delayed on U.S. Missile Defense Negotiations

Canadian leaders yesterday delayed a decision on opening missile defense discussions with the United States, Reuters reported (see GSN, May 5).

The majority of Canadian cabinet ministers support the idea of cooperating with Washington’s national missile defense system.  A number of ruling Liberal Party parliamentarians oppose the idea, however, and have asked for further briefings from the defense and foreign ministers, according to Reuters.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said the decision was delayed “because we are having a discussion inside caucus … there are differing opinions inside caucus.  That’s normal.”

The decision was originally scheduled for late Tuesday.

“We talked a bit about it today.  The ministers of foreign affairs and defense are discussing it at this time with the members of the caucus … so we decided to wait for these discussions to terminate,” Chretien said yesterday (David Ljunggren, Reuters, May 13).

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Radiological Weapons:  GAO Criticizes Energy Department’s Lack of Progress in Recovering Radioactive Sources

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Energy Department needs to place a higher priority on the recovery of unwanted sealed radioactive sources to prevent terrorists from using them in radiological weapons, according to a U.S. General Accounting Office report released yesterday (see GSN, March 14).

In its report, the GAO examined Energy’s efforts to recover and securely store unwanted radioactive sources containing “greater-than-Class-C material” — low-level radioactive wastes containing isotopes such as americium 241, cesium 137, plutonium 238 and strontium 239.  These sources, considered by the GAO to be “particularly attractive for potential use in producing ‘dirty bombs,’” cannot be disposed of at existing commercial disposal facilities, according to the report.

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has estimated that there could be as many as 500,000 greater-than-class-C sources in the United States, but the exact number of how many of these sources are unwanted is unknown because such records were never kept, according to the report.  Officials in the Energy Department’s Off-Site Recovery Project have estimated that they will recover about 14,300 unwanted greater-than-class-C sources by fiscal 2010 at a cost of approximately $69 million, the report says.  As of 2010, such sources would be sent directly to a planned disposal facility and the recovery project would end, according to department estimates.

As of February, the Off-Site Recovery Project has recovered more than 5,000 greater-than-class-C sources from about 160 U.S. sites, the GAO report says.  It warns, however, that the project’s future recovery efforts could be jeopardized by three problems:  an apparent lack of commitment to the project by Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, inadequate high-security storage capabilities and an inability to store sources containing strontium 90 and cesium 137.

According to the report, officials from the Office of Environmental Management, which currently oversees the recovery project, have said they want responsibility for the project transferred to another departmental office because the project is inconsistent with their mission.  They also said that the recovery project did not receive full funding because of other higher priority projects and that anticipated future funding levels would hinder the recovery project’s effectiveness, the report says.  It also says that if the project is not adequately funded to recover additional sources, the sources’ owners will have to secure their sources until a disposal site is available.

The GAO also found that the recovery project cannot store any further greater-than-class-C sources containing plutonium 239, which has the potential for use in a crude nuclear weapon, because there is no longer space at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that meets departmental security standards.  As a result, the report says, about 150 owners of sources containing plutonium 239, mainly universities, must work to securely store them until more disposal space becomes available.  Besides a lack of storage for greater-than-class-C sources containing plutonium 239, the Energy Department has also not approved a temporary disposal site for sources containing strontium 90 and cesium 137 at a department facility until the planned permanent disposal facility is established, the report says.

Energy officials have acknowledged the problems facing the recovery project and are working to resolve them, according to the report.  It recommends that the department determine if the recovery project has been given an appropriate priority level and adequate funding.  The report also encourages the department to work quickly to establish secure storage space for greater-than-class-C sources containing plutonium 239, strontium 90 and cesium 137.

In addition, the GAO also criticized the Energy Department for its lack of progress in establishing a permanent disposal facility for greater-than-class-C sources.  More than 17 years after the enactment of legislation requiring that the department provide such a facility, Energy has made little progress in doing so, the report says, noting that the department had anticipated completing such a facility by 2007.

According to the report, the department has not even begun the first step in establishing a permanent disposal site — the completion of appropriate environmental analyses.  Officials at the department’s Office of Environmental Management have said that funding for such an analysis was allocated in fiscal 2002 and 2003, but a budget review last year led to those funds being reallocated to other priorities, the report says.  It also says the department is considering transferring the responsibility for the analysis to another Energy office and that a decision on the transfer is expected to be made by the end of fiscal 2003.  Once an environmental impact statement is completed, the department could then propose to build a new permanent disposal facility — which could take up to seven years to develop — or to use an existing facility, according to the report. 

The report recommends that the department begin the process to establish a permanent disposal facility and to develop a plan for the continued recovery of greater-than-class-C sources in the “likely event” that the establishment of a permanent disposal facility is delayed beyond 2007.

New Legislation

Senator Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), who commissioned the GAO report, yesterday introduced new legislation to require the Energy Department to provide a final disposal facility for greater-than-class-C sources.

“GAO recently finished their inquiry, and I am sorry to report that GAO found our house is not in order,” Akaka said yesterday on the Senate floor in introducing his bill, the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Act of 2003.

Under Akaka’s bill, the energy secretary would be required to assign a departmental office the responsibility of establishing a final disposal facility for greater-than-class-C sources.  The bill also requires the energy secretary to submit several reports to Congress on the progress of creating such a facility.  For example, the bill sets a one-year deadline for Energy to submit a report on the amount of greater-than-class-C sources needing disposal of and of the actions being taken to secure such sources.  The department would then have 180 days after that report to submit to Congress a cost estimate and schedule to complete an EIS for a permanent disposal facility.  Akaka’s bill would also require the energy secretary to submit a report to Congress by the end of the year on the continued recovery and storage of greater-than-class-C sources until a permanent disposal facility is established.

“We have been particularly worried about the radioactive sources being stolen from the former Soviet Union, meanwhile an accurate tally of the radioactive devices in use in this country does not exist,” said Akaka, whose home state contains four greater-than-class-C sources that need to be recovered, according to the GAO report.  “A central issue is what happens to unwanted radioactive devices.  We don’t have an exact count of unwanted devices in this country.  Thousands of unwanted sources are awaiting recovery.  Thousands more will need to be recovered,” he said in a press statement.

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