LANL Lacks Full Accounting of Plutonium, Report Says

A government audit found that the Los Alamos National Laboratory has not conducted a full accounting of stored plutonium, enriched uranium and other nuclear weapons materials for at least 13 years, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 30, 2005).

Instead, there has been a regular series of partial counts of material, according to Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman.

It has been “perhaps 13 years or more” since the last full inventory, Friedman wrote in his report.  That means it has been well over a decade since all of the material has been physically proven to be present.

“The capability to deter, detect and assist in the prevention of theft or diversion of this material is critical,” Friedman stated.  “We were unable to find anyone with knowledge or documentation of the last time the vault was completely inventoried.”

The report calls for an improved inventory system.

Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark said that no material has disappeared from the laboratory and that statistical sampling functions well as the inventory method. 

Highly enriched uranium and plutonium are generally stored “in a tamperproof container inside a vault in the most secure facility … down a road you can’t drive down without a lab badge,” Roark said.

The audit noted that in one case it took eight days to document arrival of a shipment of nuclear material in a laboratory sector that stores limited amounts of plutonium and uranium.  The designated documentation time was within four hours.

“Under the circumstances, the nuclear material could have been diverted without any record showing that it had ever existed,” Friedman stated.

It would cost too much and not be practical to perform a full inventory, Roark said.  Material at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California undergoes full inventories on a semiannual basis, AP reported.  However, the nuclear weapons material stockpile at the laboratory is much smaller than Los Alamos’ holdings (Jennifer Talhelm, Associated Press/San Luis Obispo Tribune, Sept. 12).

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