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U.S. Energy Department Likely to Miss Deadline, GAO Reports
By Marina Malenic Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. Energy Department is unlikely to meet a fiscal 2006 deadline for installing security upgrades at U.S. nuclear facilities, according to a report released yesterday by the General Accounting Office (see GSN, April 27). “Some sites estimate that it could take as long as five years, given adequate funding,” Robin Nazzaro, GAO director for natural resources and the environment, told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. Nazzaro said the department had not increased safety measures sufficiently to respond to a post-9/11 intelligence assessment of the risk of an attack, known as the “postulated threat,” on U.S. nuclear facilities. She added that due to the delay, enriched plutonium and uranium might have to be transferred from some nuclear facilities. “The DOE is preparing to defend against a terrorist force that is significantly smaller than was identified in the postulated threats,” Nazzaro warned. Energy needs to re-evaluate procedures “because the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks suggested larger groups of terrorists with broad aspirations of causing mass casualties and panic,” she added. Nazzaro said another concern with the department’s latest Design Basis Threat — which identifies the capabilities of potential terrorist forces and is a key component of the agency’s nuclear security program — is that “the criteria for determining the severity of radiological, chemical or biological sabotage may be insufficient.” “The criterion used for protection against radiological sabotage is based on acute radiation doses received by individuals. This may not fully capture or characterize the damage that a major radiological disposal might cause,” Nazzaro said. “A worst-case analysis at one DOE site showed that while radiological dispersal would not pose immediate acute health problems for the general public, the public could experience measurable increases in cancer, mortality over a period of decades after such an event,” Nazzaro added.
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