Critics say management flaws jeopardize security at nuclear labs

Management problems at the Energy Department have prevented the agency from effectively ensuring the security of nuclear facilities, government watchdog groups and lawmakers said Tuesday.

The Energy Department took too long to modify its plan for protecting nuclear laboratories in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Robin Nazzaro, director of the General Accounting Office's natural resources and environment team. In addition, the National Nuclear Security Administration, created by Congress in 2000 as a semi-autonomous agency within Energy, lacks a clear management structure and its site offices are understaffed, Nazzaro said.

"As a result, neither the Energy Department nor the NNSA can yet provide reasonable assurance [that] weapons-grade material is protected against a determined, well-trained adversary force willing to die in a nuclear detonation or radiological dispersion," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, at a Tuesday hearing.

Energy and NNSA need stronger management practices in order to keep an eye on contractors such as the University of California, which runs Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a Washington-based watchdog group. According to POGO, two samples of plutonium-oxide have been missing from Los Alamos since 2001.

In a June 18 statement, Los Alamos Director George "Pete" Nanos acknowledged the missing plutonium but said the incident is no cause for concern. The "material has scientific and analytical research value, but is in a low hazard and threat category" he explained. POGO claims this quantity of plutonium is enough to pose a serious safety threat and the group said that Energy Department procedures require notification if more than half a gram of plutonium goes unaccounted for.

NNSA could better monitor the University of California and other nuclear facility contractors if the agency clarified the managers' responsibilities and the chain of command, Nazzaro said. Confusion about duties has created a situation where NNSA managers conduct spotty and inconsistent evaluations of contractors' compliance with government safety regulations, she said. A lack of security experts at the agency's nine site offices, which are responsible for overseeing contractors, has contributed to the problem.

Energy issued a revised "design basis threat," a strategy for preventing security breaches at nuclear labs, in May, nearly two years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Until May, the department operated under a 1999 strategy that was "obsolete" and underestimated the strength and capabilities of terrorist organizations, Nazzaro said.

Even though the Energy Department finalized its revised design basis threat a month ago, the plan will not be reflected in budget requests until fiscal 2006 and it may take nuclear facilities two to five years to "fully implement, test, validate and refine strategies for meeting [its] requirements," Nazzaro testified. This timeframe is too long, according to Shays.

"The stern new realities of the post-Sept. 11 world have been far too slow to penetrate the hardened bureaucratic maze of Energy Department offices, contractors and sites," he said.

Energy has enhanced security at nuclear facilities significantly since Sept. 11 and has hired additional staff to accommodate the increased workload, Glenn Podonsky, director of the department's office of independent oversight and performance assurance, told lawmakers. But NNSA still lacks full staffing at some site offices, he acknowledged. A recent reorganization at the agency may help clarify managers' contractor oversight responsibilities, he said.

Linton Brooks, undersecretary for nuclear security at NNSA, added that the agency has conducted "numerous" internal and independent evaluations of security at nuclear labs. These evaluations have included on-site inspections and have "verified that the overall security posture is strong" he said. "While we have made progress, we know that we can make additional improvements."

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the plutonium unaccounted for at Los Alamos as "weapons grade," relying on erroneous information in a June 18 press release from the Project on Government Oversight. The lab discovered on June 12 that it was unable to account for two low-purity analytical samples of plutonium-oxide and reported the discrepancy to the Energy Department within 24 hours, according to Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark. The samples in question were too impure to qualify as weapons grade, Roark said.