Abstract
Energy's tepid response to security concerns at nuclear facilities is all too apparent–just take a look at its bottom line.
The Energy Department can hustle when it wants to. It moved with alacrity when it came to pursuing new nuclear weapons concepts, pressuring Congress to overturn restrictions on research into low-yield bombs. Ditto when it came to requesting funding for a possible resumption of nuclear testing. But after 9/11, when confronted with the reality that security plans for its nuclear facilities were dangerously obsolete, Energy dragged its feet, taking until May 2003–nearly two years–to produce an updated security standard, the design basis threat (DBT).
Energy's strange slowness when it comes to nuclear safety has riled everyone from Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays, who chairs a House subcommittee on national security, to the folks at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonprofit watchdog group.
After 9/11, Congress asked its investigative arm, the General Accounting Office (GAO), to review physical security at Energy sites where Category I “special nuclear materials”–like highly enriched uranium and specific quantities of plutonium–were located. The name of one of the GAO's resulting reports, “Nuclear Security: DOE Needs to Resolve Significant Issues Before It Fully Meets the Design Basis Threat,” is telling.
On April 27, Shays's Subcommittee on Nuclear Safety, Emerging Threats, and International Relations held a hearing on the GAO's findings. “Without question, [Energy Department] nuclear warhead production plants, testing facilities, research labs, storage locations, and decommissioned sites are attractive targets for terrorists determined to turn our technology against us and willing to die while doing so. The highly enriched uranium and plutonium held at various locations could be used as the core of an improvised nuclear device or dispersed as a radiological weapon. Yet it took almost two years, an inexplicably and inexcusably long time, to update the DBT after September 11,” said Shays in his opening statement.
And the new DBT may not even be sufficient: “A serious question remains whether the DBT adequately reflects the true nature of the threat,” Shays said. “Some believe the design basis threat might be more accurately called the ‘dollar-based threat,’ reflecting only a watered-down measure of how much security the [Energy] Department can afford. And GAO doubts [Energy] will be able to fully implement even that standard before 2009.
“We know the terrorists will not wait that long to try to exploit lingering vulnerabilities in our nuclear complex defenses.”
At the hearing, Robin M. Nazzaro, director of GAO's Natural Resources and Environment Team, talked pointedly about the findings of the report, focusing mainly on the implementation of the long-delayed May 2003 DBT.
“A successful terrorist attack on a site containing nuclear weapons or the material used in nuclear weapons could have devastating consequences,” Nazzaro said. “Because of these risks, [Energy] needs an effective safeguards and security program. A key component of such a program is the Design Basis Threat, which is a classified document that identifies the potential size and capabilities of terrorist forces, and it's based on the Postulated Threat, an intelligence community assessment of potential terrorist threats to nuclear weapons facilities.
“First, while we found that the new DBT is substantially more demanding than the previous one, the threat contained in the 2003 DBT is less than the threat identified in the Postulated Threat. Or in other words, [Energy] is preparing to defend against a significantly smaller group of terrorists. Only for its sites and operations that handle nuclear weapons is [Energy] currently preparing to defend against an attacking force that approximates the lower range of the threat identified in the Postulated Threat. For its other Category I special nuclear material sites, which may have improvised nuclear device concerns that, if successfully exploited by terrorists, could result in a nuclear detonation, [Energy] is only preparing to defend against a terrorist force that is significantly smaller than was identified in the Postulated Threat.
“Our second concern with the DBT is that the department's criteria for determining the severity of radiological, chemical, or biological sabotage may be insufficient. For example, 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 [dispersal] might cause. For example, a worst-case analysis at one [Energy] 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. Moreover, releases at the site could also have environmental consequences requiring hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to clean up, and affect the habitat of people who live within 10 miles of the site.
“Now, let me highlight the issues that we feel need to be resolved in order for [Energy] to fully defend against the threat contained in the new DBT. To date, [Energy] has not developed any official estimates of the overall cost of DBT implementation. More importantly, current DBT implementation cost estimates do not include items such as closing unneeded facilities, transporting and consolidating material, completing line-item construction projects, and other important activities that are outside the responsibility of the safeguards and security programs budget….
“Bottom line, [Energy] is unlikely to meet its own fiscal year 2006 deadline for full implementation of the new DBT. Some sites estimate that it could take as long as five years, given adequate funding.”
“We're really concerned that [Energy] is not treating nuclear materials in the same way they're treating nuclear weapons,” Nazzaro added in response to a question from the subcommittee. “I mean, that would be something that we would want immediate attention given to.”
All the criticism seems finally to have had an effect. On May 7, at a gathering of security officials at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham shared his post-9/11 “vision for security” at Energy facilities. Admitting to past lapses (“We are all familiar with the reports of poor performance during forceon-force tests, of sleeping on duty, and of repeatedly losing keys”), Abraham declared his intention to reduce the number of sites with special nuclear materials and to consolidate the material–and he wants the DBT reevaluated annually.
Abraham's commitment to improved security in the nuclear complex is good news. But he faces serious obstacles. Abraham “will need to fight the weapons complex bureaucracy, its contractors, and its handmaiden the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which wants to protect the status quo at all costs,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of POGO, in a May 11 congressional hearing. “Frankly, the NNSA has repeatedly proven itself eager to place the lab's interests over the nation's security interests.”
After 9/11
The Energy Department took 21 months to issue a report updating its basis for protecting nuclear sites. Energy says this is because it was basing its update on the intelligence community's new “Postulated Threat.”
The intelligence community planned to complete the Postulated Threat by April 2002, but it was not completed until January 2003, about nine months behind schedule.
Energy planned to improve security only at sites that handle fully assembled nuclear weapons. At other sites that handle nuclear material
Energy officials at all levels told the General Accounting Office that concern over resources played a large role in developing the “design basis threat” (DBT)
Neither fiscal 2003 nor 2004 budgets contained any funding for implementing an updated threat response. When Energy issued its new DBT in May 2003, the cover memo said it was effective immediately but would be implemented in fiscal 2005 and 2006.
Linton Brooks, NNSA administrator and Energy undersecretary for nuclear security, testified at the April 27 hearing. (So did Brian, and in additional remarks, Brooks contested several statements Brian made in her testimony.) In spite of the GAO's findings (as well as other previous reports documenting the inadequacy of Energy's security measures), Brooks made the extraordinary claim that, “Today no nuclear weapons, no special nuclear material, and no classified materials are at risk within the nuclear weapons complex.”
In his written statement, Brooks also claimed that, notwithstanding the GAO's findings, Abraham “has directed spending on security take priority over other program spending until we can guarantee that security. This priority is reflected in our fiscal year 2005 budget request with its significant growth in security spending as well as in a reprogramming request.”
That's in keeping with Presidential Decision Directive 39, issued by President Bill Clinton in June 1995, which says the United States will give the highest priority to developing capabilities to detect, prevent, and defeat terrorists seeking nuclear weapons or materials. Specifically, Brooks said that $55.4 million from the 2004 budget had been identified “to keep DBT implementation requirements on track.”
But if security spending is truly the number one priority, and if funding seems to be the primary obstacle, why is Energy proposing to spend a whopping $5.6 billion on “stockpile stewardship” in 2005 for programs associated with maintaining the nuclear stockpile and developing new nuclear capabilities? This $5.6 billion is far more than the average annual spending for similar activities during the Cold War. As always, Energy's budget reveals its true priorities.