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 Table of ContentsExecutive Summary Executive Summary Investigators from the Project On Government Oversight conducted a site visit of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the fall of 2005.1 POGO investigators drove to the World War II-era building at ORNL – Building 3019 – which holds 1,000 cans of uranium-233, easily parked in front of the building which is “protected” by a single chain link fence, walked around for about 15 minutes, and were leaving before guards finally approached them and escorted them from the area.If the investigators had intended to do harm, they could have quickly detonated a device to blow up the building. In fact, it would have taken very little time or effort to detonate an improvised nuclear device (IND). Unfortunately, creating an IND is extraordinarily simple and could cause a detonation yielding as much as 10 kilotons, approximately the size of the Hiroshima explosion. ORNL is the most poorly protected site in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. In fact, when POGO’s investigators visited the site, there were no setback barriers to protect against truck bombs despite the number of trucks going in and out of the facility because of major construction projects; there appeared to be no fence behind the building along the truck ramp, although a truck with a bomb could park within ten feet of the building; and the building itself appears to have been constructed with corrugated steel over reinforced concrete, which attackers could easily breach. ORNL is located near the Y-12 National Security Complex, which houses the majority of the nation’s highly enriched uranium (HEU). Y-12 stores between 400 to 500 metric tons of HEU – enough for about 14,000 nuclear warheads. The configuration of Y-12 makes it particularly difficult to protect. The site is three miles long, approximately one-half mile wide, and lies between two ridge lines. There are currently five target buildings at Y-12, with multiple targets within each building. Y-12 and ORNL employ 13,000 people and are both located very close to the cities of Knoxville and Oak Ridge in Tennessee. The impact on the site and surrounding areas of a nuclear detonation would be catastrophic. The fallout from a 10 kiloton IND detonation at Y-12 could result in an estimated 60,000 casualties, including 18,000 fatalities, and harmful radiation sickness for over 40 miles. In 2003, two years after 9/11, DOE finally increased the design basis threat (DBT), the standard that determines the level of threat a facility’s protective force must be able to defend against. The 2003 DBT required that facilities protect against 1.5 times the pre-9/11 level – but this increased level is still less than half the number of terrorists involved in 9/11. All nuclear weapons sites had to implement defensive strategies to comply with that increased threat level by October 2006. Rather than requiring Y-12 to meet these requirements, the DOE’s approach can only be compared to lowering a hurdle to allow a sprinter to easily jump over it: Because Y-12 cannot meet the already-inadequate 2003 DBT, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has waived the requirement for the facility to do so. In order to bolster security, Y-12 has begun a long-overdue plan to build a storage facility called the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) to store the majority of the weapons-quantities of highly enriched uranium currently housed in the five above-ground storage buildings. A facility called the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) is planned to house the remainder of the HEU. The UPF, currently in the design phase, will also be an above-ground structure. The DOE Inspector General and POGO have both been critical of the above-ground design on both cost and security grounds. There have been several cost increases and schedule slippages during the construction of the HEUMF. Initially estimated to cost $97 million and open in 2008, the current cost estimate is more than $500 million and, after the most recent construction debacle, it is not scheduled to be completed until at least 2010. Furthermore, the proposed UPF, which will be adjacent to the HEUMF, is not scheduled to be constructed until 2013. Secretary Bodman’s security waiver means Y-12 will not hire the additional guards required to protect the multiple aging buildings. Therefore, there will be nearly 300 fewer guards protecting the HEU at Y-12 than is required to meet the government’s standards, leaving the site at high risk for at least the next seven years.  Introduction
In 2004, an authoritative report on nuclear terrorism by the Monterey Institute 3 concluded that a variety of U.S. policies “need revision based on the recognition that non-state actors seeking to cause nuclear mayhem represent the paramount threat facing the United States today.” Among the policies that need reexamination, according to the study, are those in the U.S. nuclear materials security programs “that do not give priority to the fissile material of greatest interest to terrorists – that is, highly enriched uranium."4 Since POGO’s original report in 2001, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Security at Risk, the organization’s continuing investigations12 have documented how a variety of U.S. nuclear facilities have not implemented adequate protections against these threats, even when the facilities have large stashes of weapons-grade and weapons-quantity nuclear materials which particularly merit protection. As the nation learned on September 11, 2001, terrorists can be suicidal. The potential impact of a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons on U.S. soil is too significant to permit the kind of inefficient and ineffective security at nuclear weapons facilities which has persisted. There are some proven technologies DOE could implement to improve the current security situation. For instance, the U.S. government has simple delay mechanisms which would significantly slow terrorist access to sensitive materials. At least two of these mechanisms were developed by DOE and are currently deployed at Department of Defense facilities, as well as at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory and Office of Safeguard Transportation trailers, which transport nuclear warheads and nuclear material throughout the U.S.13 This report more specifically documents the shortcomings of efforts to secure Y-12 and ORNL. An initial examination of these sites was reported in POGO’s May 2005 study, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Homeland Security Opportunities. That report presented the findings of POGO’s investigation into security at facilities throughout the nuclear weapons complex, and concluded that consolidating weapons-grade nuclear materials from 13 sites to seven sites would dramatically increase security, as well as save the DOE an estimated $3 billion in security costs over three years.14 For this investigation, POGO drew upon multiple sources including DOE analysts; current and former DOE officials; the Scowcroft Commission staff,15 the Nuclear Command and Control Staff at the Pentagon; the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board;16 current and former Wackenhut management and security officers; the Mies Commission;17 the Natural Resources Defense Council; congressional staff; the Defense Threat Reduction Agency; and members of Grizzly Hitch, a section of the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., that tests the security of nuclear weapons facilities. The Impacts Of A Nuclear AttackThe Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are both located in Tennessee near Knoxville (population 173,890) and Oak Ridge (population 28,000). The combined workforce for the two sites is approximately 13,000 people. If a terrorist group attacked either one of the facilities and created a detonation using an improvised nuclear device (IND), it would result in an unmitigated disaster, causing untold numbers of deaths, radiation sickness, and property damage. The explosion from the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima was created using a “gun type” method (firing a piece of highly enriched uranium at another piece to create a chain reaction). Using the same theory, terrorists could create a crude IND by taking two pieces of the highly enriched uranium (HEU) and slamming them together with conventional explosives, or by simply dropping one plate of HEU from a certain height onto another.18 This nearly happened accidentally at Y-12 several years ago.19 As Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez explained:
According to Princeton University physicist Frank von Hippel, “a 100-pound mass of uranium dropped on a second 100-pound mass, from a height of about 6 feet, could produce a blast of 5 to10 kilotons."21 By comparison, the blast from the Hiroshima bomb was 13 kilotons. It killed over 200,000 people.22
The Design Basis Threat: A Moving TargetThe Design Basis Threat (DBT) describes the level of threat – the number of outside attackers, the number of active and passive inside conspirators, and the kinds of weapons and size of truck bombs that would be available to terrorists – a facility’s protective force is required to defend against. (Appendix A) Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, DOE has closely examined its DBT for facilities with assembled nuclear warheads, and weapons-grade and weapons-quantities of nuclear materials that can be used to quickly construct an IND or radiological dispersal device. 2003 Design Basis Threat In 2003, almost two years after the 9/11 attacks, DOE finally announced a new DBT and that the DBT would be fully implemented by October 2006. The previous DBT had been criticized as being unrealistically low, even before 9/11: the number of predicted adversaries was about one quarter the number that was actually involved in the 9/11 attacks. The 2003 DBT was only slightly more realistic, but did not come close to the Postulated Threat27 developed by the intelligence community. It was still less than half the number of 9/11 adversaries. Even so, for facilities with assembled nuclear weapons,28 the new DBT doubled the number of predicted outside attackers. But for sites containing special nuclear materials, which can be used to create an improvised nuclear device, DOE only increased the DBT by 1.5 times. This minor increase for these sites was surprising because most security experts believe that it is more likely for terrorists to attempt to gain access to special nuclear materials in order to create an IND than it is for them to try to gain access to a nuclear weapon: it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for a terrorist group to detonate a relatively-modern U.S. nuclear warhead, which has such safeguards as Permissive Action Links (PALs) 29 and locks. As noted before, an IND can be created much more easily.
In early 2004, both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the DOE Inspector General (IG) concluded that a number of nuclear weapons facilities will not be able to meet the October 2006 deadline for implementing the 2003 DBT. The GAO concluded that, “... DOE has not developed any official long-range cost estimates or developed any integrated, long-range implementation plans for the May 2003 DBT.”30
In 2003 and 2004, several hearings were held on this issue by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. At one of the hearings, the GAO reported its findings to National Security Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays (R-CT), who had requested a wide-ranging review of security throughout the nuclear weapons complex. The Congressional investigators’ testimony was unusually critical of the feeble 2003 DBT, as well as of security at the sites being managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). They were also critical of the 2003 DBT, reporting that some officials believed it was a “funding basis threat,” or Dollar Basis Threat, suggesting that the DOE simply did not want to spend the money it would need to implement more realistic protections.31 In October 2005, the DOE IG also issued a highly critical report about the inability of NNSA sites to meet the 2003 DBT. According to the report:
The IG’s Office has also told POGO that it currently has a draft report questioning whether DOE’s Energy, Science, and Environment (ESE) office, which oversees ORNL, can meet the 2003 DBT.
DOE’s Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance Director Glenn Podonsky pointed out that the way out of this morass is to consolidate the SNM and reduce the security costs:
If DOE implements a plan presented by POGO in its 2005 report, U. S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Homeland Security Opportunities, to consolidate the special nuclear materials currently spread across the country at 13 sites down to seven, the Department would save $3 billion over a three-year period while increasing security, thereby reducing the financial pressure to decrease the DBT. Two Sites At High Risk: Y-12 And ORNLAt Y-12, the plan is to replace the five aging buildings currently storing HEU with two: the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF), into which the majority of Y-12’s SNM will be consolidated, and a Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), which is currently only in the design phase and is not scheduled to be built until 2013. According to a Y-12 security briefing for POGO investigators, DOE has decided not to spend the money to increase the size of the protective force to the 800 officers necessary to protect the site. As a result, Y-12 will not have a guard force necessary to meet the government’s security standards until the facility’s HEU has been consolidated into the HEUMF and the UPF. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has issued a waiver for Y-12, exempting the facility from DOE’s security standards because it cannot meet them. In other words, Y-12 will remain at high risk for the next seven years. (Appendix C) This raises the question: what is the point of a standard if it is simply waived when it cannot be met? ORNL also will remain at high risk until the uranium-233 stored there has been removed from the lab entirely. It is physically impossible to protect that material at ORNL because of the location of Building 3019, where the material is stored. With labs and other buildings within 50-100 feet of Building 3019, there is not enough space for double-alarm sensors that provide detection and some delay. In addition, with no stand-off distance, there is no room for vehicle barriers to handle the design-basis blast.38 Y-12 National Security Complex
The Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12) dates from the World War II Manhattan Project and is currently where DOE manufactures nuclear weapons components. The facility is overseen by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and operated by contractor BWX Technologies Y-12 (BWXT), and Wackenhut Corporation is contracted to provide security. Y-12 contains the world’s largest repository of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in metal form, storing approximately 400 metric tons of the material – enough for about 14,000 nuclear warheads. It only takes about 45 kilograms (approximately 100 pounds) of HEU to construct a crude nuclear bomb.41 HEU is the material of choice for terrorists because it is easy and quick to create a crude nuclear weapon either on location at one of the nation’s nuclear facilities or, if stolen from a facility, in a highly-populated city.
Y-12 is in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, about 15 miles from Knoxville.42 Roughly 700,000 people live within a 100 mile radius of the facility.43 The 811-acre compound – over three miles long and half a mile wide44 – is nestled in a valley between two ridges. (See Figure 3.) Because of its location, Y-12 is a difficult site to defend: attackers could use the surrounding high ground to help gain control of the facility. There have been long-standing security problems at Y-12. The problems first came to light in the early 1980s when congressional investigators discovered that the facility’s HEU and nuclear weapons parts were being stored in WWII-era wooden buildings, all above ground. The storage buildings – which are still above ground and one is even still wooden – are prime targets for a terrorist attack, and security at Y-12 is precarious at best. The wooden building, Building 9720-5, is the primary HEU storage location, although HEU is also stored in four other buildings at Y-12. Storing HEU in a wooden building is not only concerning for security reasons, but for safety reasons as well. According to a 1996 DOE report, “Fire dominates all Y-12 Plant HEU accident scenarios. Building 9720-5, the primary HEU storage facility, is a warehouse of timber frame construction.” (Appendix D) Inventories of nuclear materials are supposed to be conducted by DOE’s weapons facilities every few years, or even more frequently, to ensure that none of the materials have been stolen. However, it is unclear how a credible inventory could or would be conducted at Y-12 because huge numbers of containers of highly enriched uranium have not been opened for 20 to 40 years. Counting containers alone would not work because, in a theft situation, the containers could be emptied and another material substituted. (Appendix E) In 2000, a DOE team was dispatched to Y-12 when it was discovered that the facility had not taken an inventory of its highly enriched uranium in five or six years. Y-12 was ultimately given an unsatisfactory rating. In 2004, another team was dispatched to Y-12 because of questions about its inventory, and sources tell POGO Y-12 was given a rating of only “marginal.” Much of the material being stored at Y-12 remains there needlessly. Over 174 metric tons were declared excess and not necessary for the nuclear weapons program in 1996. As of 2005, only 34 metric tons had been downblended.45 DOE claims that by the end of 2006, 91 metric tons will have been downblended. The rest of the downblending is not scheduled to be completed as late as 2030. (Appendix F)
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October 16, 2006
Summary