Editorial: Nuclear insecurity

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007 | 7:24 a.m.

Although instructed by Congress a year ago to tighten security at the nation's nuclear bomb factories and laboratories, the Energy Department has failed to do so.

Only five of the Energy Department's 11 locations that handle nuclear material will meet the congressional deadline of 2008, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Congress has pushed the Energy Department to better protect the facilities against terrorists and other security threats. The department and its contractors have repeatedly failed in the past to provide any sense of assurance that the nation's nuclear supply is safe. For example, during the past several years simulated attacks on the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico repeatedly succeeded , with mock terrorists carrying off nuclear material or blowing it up.

Instead of tightening security, the Energy Department has delayed action at some sites that store plutonium because it plans to consolidate locations.

In other cases, such as at the Idaho National Laboratory, the department is taking its sweet time - security upgrades aren't expected to be done there until 2013. Other sites that will miss the deadline include the Nevada Test Site.

The Energy Department has apparently been slow to move in part because of turf fights. Robert Alvarez, an Energy Department official in the Clinton administration, told The New York Times there is general agreement to consolidate the storage of plutonium in a few locations, but he noted there is "a lot of pushback about moving fissile material from a site because then you lose a portion of your budget and prestige."

So national security concerns are outweighed by budget and prestige?

Given the department's ludicrous attempts to use faulty science to defend its indelibly broken plan to make Nevada the nation's nuclear waste dump, this should not be a surprise. It is, however, a sign of how bad things are in the Energy Department.

Nothing good can come from an agency that puts bureaucratic infighting ahead of national security.