Amid growing concern that nuclear weapons labs are vulnerable to a terrorist attack, senior Energy Department officials are seriously considering major steps to improve security -- including the removal of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and other weapons sites.
A classified directive issued late last year ordered the department, which already was examining the security of its weapons-grade nuclear materials, to consider consolidating them in fewer locations, according to congressional sources.
Energy officials said Monday that security at their facilities was "strong." But they acknowledged that they were reviewing proposals to improve protection by consolidating the sites where the government stored plutonium and highly enriched uranium -- the elements essential to a nuclear bomb.
The pace of improvements, however, has left many outside experts and leaders in Congress dissatisfied.
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the House national security subcommittee, said that the system remained vulnerable and that the Energy Department was underestimating the threat it faces. Shays' committee is to have a hearing on the matter today.
The Energy Department has nuclear materials in at least seven major weapons sites across the nation, but Livermore -- 44 miles southeast of San Francisco and surrounded by residential communities -- is closer to a major metropolitan area than the others.
In the last year, the Energy Department has increased its assumptions about the size and firepower of terrorist teams that could assault its labs. Government officials now say that anyone bent on attack probably could use high-powered explosives to punch holes though reinforced concrete walls and then be able to penetrate razor wire fencing and defeat the most sophisticated electronic surveillance systems.
But the General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, will report today that the threat posed by terrorists against the nation's weapons labs is estimated by intelligence agencies to be far more lethal than what the Energy Department has accepted in its most recent planning for security.
The bomb-making materials at Livermore have received particular attention, based on concerns about the site's vulnerabilities. The materials are kept in a fenced area known as the Superblock, situated about a quarter-mile from a residential tract.
