Test Site guards failed attack drill

Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005 | 11:06 a.m.

Guards stationed at the Nevada Test Site to protect the nuclear weapons complex 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas apparently failed a recent test in which they faced a mock terrorist attack.

Darwin Morgan, spokewman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency within the Energy Department that runs the nuclear weapons complex, said Tuesday that unspecified deficiencies had been identified during the exercise, performed late last year to test the capability of Test Site guards to protect weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium stored at the site.

In a force-on-force exercise, specially trained commandos under the Energy Department's Office of Independent Oversight and Performance Assurance staged a mock attack simulating a potential terrorist attack.

Since the exercise at the end of last year, the National Nuclear Security Administration has "taken corrective actions" at the Test Site, Morgan said.

The Nevada Test Site has always been a heavily guarded facility because it has tested nuclear weapons from 1951 until September 1992. The government is continuing nuclear-related activities at the site, conducting subcritical underground nuclear experiments that do not cause a nuclear chain reaction.

Morgan said the security requirements at the Test Site have been raised because some special nuclear materials are being transferred for security reasons from Los Alamos, N.M., where they had been in an area known as Technical Area 18, to the Test Site.

The special nuclear materials and some equipment from the New Mexico is to be transferred to the Device Assembly Facility at the Test Site, Morgan said. The Device Assembly Facility is a buried building guarded by gun turrets at either end, officials said.

Morgan noted that "we have been growing the guard force."

The Test Site expects to have 240 to 250 guards in place by the time the nuclear materials from New Mexico arrive, Morgan said.

Exact numbers of guards and details about the Test Site are kept secret for security reasons, Morgan said.

The Test Site is guarded by forces provided by Wackenhut Services Inc. under contract with the Energy Department. The department last year put the Nevada security contract out for bid along with its prime operating contract held by Bechtel Nevada.