Los Alamos can't account for all plutonium
Pastor Dale Morgan
Los Alamos can't account for all plutonium*
Nuclear weapons materials not fully inventoried for 13 years
By JENNIFER TALHELM
WASHINGTON (AP) — A stockpile of plutonium and other nuclear weapons
materials stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory hasn't been fully
accounted for in 13 years or more, a government audit has found.
The northern New Mexico lab's workers have done regular, partial
inventories of the material, which the government considers to be at
high risk of theft, the audit by the Energy Department's inspector
general, Gregory Friedman, found.
Yet an inventory of all the material hasn't been done in "perhaps 13
years or more," Friedman wrote. It wasn't even done when the lab's
management contract changed last year, investigators noted in the report
made public Wednesday.
Friedman said he is concerned because the lack of complete inventories
means that lab workers likely haven't physically accounted for all of
the material in more than a decade.
"The capability to deter, detect and assist in the prevention of theft
or diversion of this material is critical," Friedman wrote. Yet, he
added: "We were unable to find anyone with knowledge or documentation of
the last time the vault was completely inventoried."
The lab is responsible for maintaining stores of plutonium, enriched
uranium and depleted uranium as well as other materials used in the
nation's nuclear weapons program.
The report recommends the lab's managers improve the inventory process.
Lab spokesman Kevin Roark defended the practice of using statistical
sampling for its inventories. He also pointed out that Friedman's
concerns were just about administrative procedure. No nuclear material
is missing, he said.
While Friedman noted that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
conducts full inventories semiannually, Roark said Lawrence Livermore
has a much smaller store of nuclear material. Full inventories are
impractical and expensive, given Los Alamos' much larger supply, Roark said.
He added that the highly enriched uranium and plutonium is typically
kept "in a tamperproof container inside a vault in the most secure
facility ... down a road you can't drive down without a lab badge."
Still, Los Alamos has been plagued by security lapses over the years —
from missing data storage devices to the discovery of classified data
during a drug bust at a former lab contract worker's trailer.
While auditors said the lab is generally doing a good job at tracking
the most sensitive material, the lack of a full inventory was one of
several issues they said needed fixing. Among the other problems
auditors found:
_None of the six inventories of the highly sensitive material done since
December 2005 has been finished on time, a problem that was noted during
similar audits in 2003 and 2005.
_Some lab employees don't follow instructions for how to develop
identification numbers for the materials so they are easily identified.
For example, auditors said one system was based on characters in a movie
that a technician had just seen.
_In an area that stores less sensitive nuclear material — containing
smaller amounts of plutonium and uranium — a new shipment of nuclear
material wasn't documented for eight days. Auditors noted that it was
supposed to have been entered into the system within four hours.
"Under the circumstances, the nuclear material could have been diverted
without any record showing that it had ever existed," Friedman wrote.