Doe Beefing Up Safeguards At Nuclear Weapons Facilities
The Energy Department announced Friday it was tightening safeguards at several of its nuclear laboratories and facilities after finding security lapses in its weapons complex. The measures include more guards, new alarm systems and additional training.
“We face new security challenges that demand new security solutions,” said Energy Secretary Federico Pena.
Pena said two internal reports found “no immediate danger to nuclear material at any DOE site” but revealed security shortcomings at a number of weapons facilities.
The investigations by the department’s Office of Oversight and the Office of Security Affairs found “exploitable weaknesses” in security at the Pantex weapons facility in Texas, the Rocky Flats facility in Colorado, and two weapons laboratories - Los Alamos in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California.
“The reports highlight problems, but they also show that our site managers have been instrumental in helping to identify the problems and have been working to address them,” Pena said.
Joseph Mahaley, the department’s director of security affairs, said that the problems found at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos involved lapses by security guards and their “response capabilities … in recent performance tests.”
At the Rocky Flats facility, which in the midst of major cleanup after decades of processing plutonium for warheads, investigators found inadequate contingency plans for recapturing nuclear material if it were diverted, Mahaley said.
At Pantex, a facility near Amarillo, Texas, where thousands of obsolete warheads are being dismantled and their plutonium kept in storage at the site, investigators found an aging alarm system, officials said.
The latest findings came a week after the General Accounting Office, the auditing arm of Congress, found that the Energy Department routinely allowed visitors from such countries as China, Russia and even Iran access to three weapons labs without adequate security checks.
Some of the individuals allowed access to the three weapons labs - Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico - were later shown to have “suspected foreign intelligence connections,” the GAO report found.
Pena said that as part of an attempt to improve security at the Energy Department facilities, the department would begin working with Navy commandos, who will attempt to penetrate facilities as part of training exercises.
The report by the Energy Department’s Office of Oversight said that despite “exploitable weaknesses” at some of the weapons sites, the shortcomings would not have allowed an adversary to penetrate the facilities.
“There’s no immediate risk at any of those facilities,” said Mahaley. “We found that we needed to make improvements.” xxxx STEPS TO BE TAKEN The Energy Department will: Create a security oversight board including representative of the FBI, Defense Department and CIA to review security and advise the energy secretary. Hire more guards at Livermore and Los Alamos, at the Nevada Test Site, and at the Hanford weapons facility in Washington state. Upgrade aging alarm and security systems at most weapons facilities, including a phasing in of new computerized security technology at Pantex. Strengthen steps to process background checks of visitors to DOE nuclear facilities including stepped-up counterintelligence activities.