Los Alamos National Scientific Laboratory

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Wednesday that he wanted the FBI to investigate the loss of classified computer disks at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. But FBI officials in New Mexico say they will only monitor the case. Abraham issued a public memo that called on Energy Department officials in New Mexico to "request the FBI Los Alamos Field Office open an investigation." FBI officials said they did not have a Los Alamos field office.

A big earthquake and resultant fire could trigger potentially deadly releases of radioactive materials from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico due to "major deficiencies" in the nuclear weapons lab's safety planning, federal safety experts warned Tuesday. The warning from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board was sent to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, urging him to "execute both immediate and long-term actions." A spokeswoman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, a part of the Energy Department, said, "We are currently evaluating the board's recommendation and preparing a formal response."

A University of California regents panel Thursday recommended renewal of five-year contracts under which UC manages two nuclear weapons research laboratories, despite allegations that the university does a poor job of supervising the research and that lab officials are trying to block any comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviets.

The former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory said Saturday that North Korea is serious about denuclearizing and is willing to contemplate a program such as that used to help former Soviet republics destroy their nuclear weapons. "This is a big deal," said Siegfried Hecker, referring to North Korea's accomplishments so far in shutting down its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang.

Wen Ho Lee walked out of court a free man Wednesday after a federal judge repeatedly apologized for incarcerating him for nine months without trial and angrily rebuked the Clinton administration for its handling of a case that "embarrassed this entire nation." In a morning marked by high drama, laughter and tears of joy, the former Los Alamos nuclear weapon scientist agreed in thickly accented English to a negotiated deal that brings an abrupt end to the highly controversial case.

Tony Tomei heard the explosion the same time the firefighters did, from somewhere up the canyon away from the flames that were threatening his neighborhood. The firefighters raced off in their trucks to deal with whatever had blown up. Tomei stayed. Four days later, he was still there. "I just got caught up in it," said Tomei, an engineer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

A big earthquake and resultant fire could trigger potentially deadly releases of radioactive materials from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico due to "major deficiencies" in the nuclear weapons lab's safety planning, federal safety experts warned Tuesday. The warning from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board was sent to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, urging him to "execute both immediate and long-term actions." A spokeswoman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, a part of the Energy Department, said, "We are currently evaluating the board's recommendation and preparing a formal response."

A nuclear weapons scientist who publicly questioned the feasibility of a key part of the Star Wars program is leaving Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he once did battle with one of the legendary names in nuclear physics, Edward Teller. Roy Woodruff, 49, former director of Livermore's nuclear weapons program, announced Wednesday that he is moving to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where he will become a senior adviser in the arms control and verification program.

The Los Alamos scientist accused of copying top U.S. nuclear secrets, then freed after a plea bargain, will tell his side of the story in a book and a television miniseries, his lawyer said Tuesday. Wen Ho Lee and his family examined "numerous" book and movie offers before finalizing two deals this week, said attorney David Weil of O'Melveny & Myers, a Los Angeles firm that was part of Lee's courtroom defense. Lee signed contracts with publisher Hyperion, a branch of Disney-owned ABC Inc.

Some of the scientists and engineers who design the nation's nuclear bombs are sporting an odd bumper sticker on their cars in the remote mountain community at Los Alamos National Laboratory: "Striving for a Work-free Safe Zone." The message -- which has angered managers all the way to Washington -- underscores a feeling among some workers that the people running the lab care more about security and safety than scientific research.

The University of California has agreed to pay the federal government $2.8 million over a security breakdown at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Under the settlement, the university has accepted responsibility for the violations, the National Nuclear Security Administration said in a statement.

The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday proposed a record $3-million fine against the University of California for a security breach last year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in which a worker took home classified documents on a thumb drive.

The former Los Alamos National Laboratory worker who took classified materials home will face a single misdemeanor charge of negligent handling of classified documents, her lawyer said in Santa Fe. Jessica Quintana, 23, is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, attorney Stephen Aarons said. Police found the data on a portable drive and in about 200 pages of documents in October during a drug bust at her Los Alamos home.

The Department of Energy on Monday cited the University of California for 15 violations of safety rules in 2005 involving nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, including a case of mishandled materials where low levels of radiation were spread across several states. The violations would have carried a $1.1-million fine, but federal law waves such penalties for certain nonprofit contractors.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has started random drug testing of its scientists, engineers and other employees after finding secret nuclear weapons data in a former worker's residential trailer, lab officials told a House investigation panel Tuesday. Police discovered about 1,500 pages of classified information, along with methamphetamine pipes, while responding to a domestic disturbance call at a trailer park in Los Alamos, N.M., in October.

The nation's nuclear weapons chief was fired Thursday, after a long series of security breaches at Los Alamos National Laboratory and other weapons sites had prompted strong criticism of his performance. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman issued an unusual public statement Thursday saying he had asked for the resignation of Linton F. Brooks, chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which operates eight major bomb facilities across the nation.

Actor Martin Sheen was among 400 anti-nuclear protesters who rallied at Los Alamos National Laboratory on Monday, the 54th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. Sheen and 75 others were briefly detained. The group protested the lab's production of new plutonium pits, which is the core of a nuclear bomb. "We are the generation that brought the bomb in. We have got to be the generation that should take it out," Sheen said.

FBI agents misled physicist Wen Ho Lee into believing that he had failed a Department of Energy polygraph test as they pressed him during a lengthy interrogation last March to confess to passing nuclear weapons secrets to China. Lee insisted throughout the tape-recorded session that he was telling the truth, unaware that polygraph examiners actually had given him an extremely high score for honesty.

Security at Los Alamos National Laboratory was "seriously flawed" when a worker removed classified documents that were later found in her home during a drug bust, the Department of Energy's inspector general has concluded. In a number of key areas, security policies at the nuclear weapons lab were nonexistent, not followed or were applied inconsistently, according to Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman.

Los Alamos National Laboratory said that the classified documents discovered at a trailer park during a drug investigation last month did not include the most highly sensitive nuclear weapons information. The lab, which designs nuclear weapons, said a "careful and comprehensive analysis" of three electronic memory devices and paper copies of classified documents found in a residential trailer showed that they were mostly low-level secrets that are 20 to 30 years old.