|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Report Alleges Missing Plutonium at Los Alamos
More than 600 pounds of plutonium are unaccounted for at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to a report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research expected to be released today, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (see GSN, Nov. 28). The institute culled data from five publicly available reports and Los Alamos and Energy Department documents. While there is no indication that the missing plutonium has been stolen or is being used illegally, the missing material raises “a vast security issue,” according to the report. “The security implications … are extremely serious, since less than 2 percent of the lowest unaccounted-for plutonium is enough to make one nuclear bomb,” according to the report. The report found that the plutonium cold have been discarded unsafely in Los Alamos landfills, shipped to a burial site in a nearby salt mine, or stolen or shipped without record. “If it has left the site, then it obviously has the most grievous security implications," said report coauthor Arjun Makhijani. “I cannot say that it has left the site, but the government has the responsibility to ensure that it has not.” “And the University (of California) obviously has a responsibility in this. It should be a grave embarrassment for the university to be sitting on numbers like this and discrepancies like this, and not have resolved them,” Arjun added. University of California spokesman Chris Harrington said the laboratory “does an annual inventory of special nuclear materials which is overseen by (the U.S. Energy Department). These inventories have been occurring for 20-plus years. Special nuclear materials are carefully tracked to a minute quantity” (Keay Davidson, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 30).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
