GAO: Nuke Weapons Sites Remain Vulnerable(911 security upgrades need 5 yrs

[papau]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4027478,00.html

GAO: Nuke Weapons Sites Remain Vulnerable(911 security upgrades need 5 more yrs)

Tuesday April 27, 2004 8:46 PM By H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Security upgrades ordered at nuclear weapons sites after the Sept. 11 attacks may not be fully in place for five more years, auditors say.

The delay has led to the possibility that plutonium and weapons-grade uranium might have to be removed from some facilities.

Investigators with the General Accounting Office said Tuesday the Energy Department's 2006 deadline for meeting its new security requirements at weapons labs and other facilities probably is not realistic, short by possibly as much as three years.

At the same time even that program, based on assumptions developed last year about the kind of terrorist assault that might be expected given the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is being revised, administration and congressional officials acknowledged.

For the first time, the Energy Department is asking security planners to prepare for the possibility that a terrorist would try to take over a facility holding nuclear material, barricade himself inside and try to fashion a crude nuclear weapon and detonate it in a suicide attack. <snip>

In addition to Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Y-13, weapons-grade nuclear materials are at the Hanford reservation in Washington state; Rocky Flats facility in Colorado; Savannah River complex in South Carolina; the Pantex facility in Texas; Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory; the Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho; and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.