Post by jonnygemini on Nov 30, 2005 13:55:54 GMT -5
from: www.sploid.com/news/2005/11/nuclear_arsenal.php
[How would you like four dozen of these pointed at the White House?]
Los Alamos National Laboratory suffered a great deal of embarrassment in 1999 when Wen Ho Lee was falsely accused of espionage. After nine months in solitary confinement, Lee was freed after he plead guilty to the reduced charge of mishandling government secrets and was sentenced to time served.
Two years later, a report in the Albuquerque Journal quoted internal papers from Los Alamos saying the lab's loss reporting system "is conducive to covering [up] for items that are actually stolen." So conducive that $3 million worth of equipment had gone missing.
Now things have gotten really bad: 600 pounds of plutonium has gone missing, enough to build more than four dozen nuclear warheads.
The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, based in Tacoma Park, Maryland, has just completed a review of the U.S. Energy Department and Los Alamos reports from 1996 to 2004, and found gross inconsistencies.
Arjun Makhijani, one of the co-authors of the report, offered three possible explanations, each more terrifying than the last:
* It was shipped to a salt mine without accurate recording.
* It was deposited in an illegally a nearby landfill. The landfills in the immediate area came under scrutiny last year even before the plutonium fears about all the toxins. The clean up was delayed because local pilots feared wind shear would be created by a change in the nearby topography.
* It was stolen.
[Where's Waldo's plutonium?] In what was intended as a defense of the facility's record keeping, the report said Los Alamos "does an annual inventory of special nuclear materials which is overseen by [the Department of Energy]. These inventories have been occurring for 20-plus years. Special nuclear materials are carefully tracked to a minute quantity."
It is clear that he is horrifyingly wrong. From Los Alamos, it's only a seven-hour drive down Interstate 25 to the porous Mexican border. From there, it would be a simple matter for a terrorist get his hands on this most precious and deadly contraband.
[How would you like four dozen of these pointed at the White House?]
Los Alamos National Laboratory suffered a great deal of embarrassment in 1999 when Wen Ho Lee was falsely accused of espionage. After nine months in solitary confinement, Lee was freed after he plead guilty to the reduced charge of mishandling government secrets and was sentenced to time served.
Two years later, a report in the Albuquerque Journal quoted internal papers from Los Alamos saying the lab's loss reporting system "is conducive to covering [up] for items that are actually stolen." So conducive that $3 million worth of equipment had gone missing.
Now things have gotten really bad: 600 pounds of plutonium has gone missing, enough to build more than four dozen nuclear warheads.
The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, based in Tacoma Park, Maryland, has just completed a review of the U.S. Energy Department and Los Alamos reports from 1996 to 2004, and found gross inconsistencies.
Arjun Makhijani, one of the co-authors of the report, offered three possible explanations, each more terrifying than the last:
* It was shipped to a salt mine without accurate recording.
* It was deposited in an illegally a nearby landfill. The landfills in the immediate area came under scrutiny last year even before the plutonium fears about all the toxins. The clean up was delayed because local pilots feared wind shear would be created by a change in the nearby topography.
* It was stolen.
[Where's Waldo's plutonium?] In what was intended as a defense of the facility's record keeping, the report said Los Alamos "does an annual inventory of special nuclear materials which is overseen by [the Department of Energy]. These inventories have been occurring for 20-plus years. Special nuclear materials are carefully tracked to a minute quantity."
It is clear that he is horrifyingly wrong. From Los Alamos, it's only a seven-hour drive down Interstate 25 to the porous Mexican border. From there, it would be a simple matter for a terrorist get his hands on this most precious and deadly contraband.