A battle between intellectual advancement and national security
concerns in Northern California may result in significant changes
in the research capabilities of one University of
California-managed laboratory.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the primary
nuclear weapons labs in the United States, has been criticized
recently for its perceived vulnerability to terrorist attacks and
has been urged to move its store of plutonium and highly enriched
uranium to a more secure location.
The lab has resisted this measure because the removal of the
nuclear material would hinder its research efforts. Livermore
officials maintain that the lab’s security, which is
constantly reevaluated, is adequate to combat potential terrorist
threats.
“Security has never been better than it is right
now,” said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the Energy
Department, which oversees research labs across the country,
including Livermore.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the lab has
instituted a number of security upgrades. But a report released
Tuesday by the General Accounting Office, the investigative wing of
Congress, admonished the lab and four others for their lingering
vulnerabilities.
The report also cited the labs’ proposed time frames to
update their security procedures as unrealistic.
Concern has arisen over the prospect of a terrorist group
infiltrating the labs and constructing and detonating a makeshift
nuclear device within minutes.
The Design Basis Threat is a program instituted by the labs that
will require them to be able to defend against a “larger
attacking force” by 2006. The GAO report said the labs will
likely not be ready by then.
“They (the GAO) don’t think we can meet our own
standards that we laid out for ourselves but that’s
absolutely not true,” Wilkes said.
“Sept. 11 changed a lot of things and since Sept. 11, we
have been doing a lot of things to improve security at all of our
sites,” he said.
The security concerns surrounding Livermore, located about 45
miles southeast of San Francisco, are derived largely from the
lab’s vicinity to residential communities.
Testifying before the House Subcommittee on National Security on
Tuesday, Danielle Brian, executive director of independent watchdog
group, Project on Government Oversight, said the lab “will
not be able to comply with the new directives” and poses a
serious threat to its neighboring communities.
“The encroaching residential community surrounding
Lawrence Livermore has made it nearly impossible to properly
protect the weapons quantities of plutonium and highly enriched
uranium stored there,” Brian said.
Brian recommended the nuclear materials at Livermore be moved to
the Energy Department’s Nevada Test Site.
Moving the materials will make them more secure, but researchers
at Livermore question whether this outweighs the benefits of their
research.
“If all the nuclear securities in the United States were
in one area, it would make security much easier,” said David
Schwoegler, a spokesman for Livermore.
“You have to strike a balance between what’s in the
best interest of national security from a research standpoint and
what’s in the best interest of national security from a
materials protection standpoint,” he said.
A large portion of the research done at Livermore is
environmentally friendly, Schwoegler said, as it study methods to
dismantle, immobilize and store nuclear weapons that create as
little nuclear waste as possible.