Anti-terror plan beefs up security at Savannah site

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Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham outlined nearly two dozen security changes Friday morning at the Savannah River Site near Aiken to a cheering crowd of nuclear security officers.

"We are the custodians of national security assets that must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands," he said. "Lives depend on it."

"Since the stakes are so high," Abraham told the security officers, "everything is on the table," including possible creation of a "special elite federal force" to protect the most sensitive installations.

Abraham said the Department of Energy will consider a special security detachment to guard the agency's high-priority nuclear facilities, with capabilities similar to the military's Delta Force or Navy SEAL units.

Abraham acknowledged recent reports of security lapses, such as lost keys, at some DOE sites, but he called the incidents rare.

"But frankly, rare or not, they are unacceptable, and the failure of any and all levels of management to address instances such as these will not be tolerated," he said.

In a move to reduce the number of nuclear facilities that need high-level protection, Abraham proposed consolidating special nuclear material — the type used for weapons and other sensitive applications — into fewer sites.

The consolidation effort would remove the most sensitive nuclear material from an area of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Sandia Pulse Reactor facility in New Mexico, consolidate material stored at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and assess whether defense-related work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California could be relocated. That would allow removal of special nuclear material from that facility.

Abraham's proposals fell in three broad categories: cyber security, minimizing the number of sites that have dangerous nuclear material and upgrading physical defenses.

"This is an admission that security at the sites has been inadequate and needs to be upgraded," said Tom Clements, director of Greenpeace's nuclear campaign. "It's good that they're addressing it."

The announcements came on the heels of several recent revelations about problems with nuclear security, including a March report by the Energy Department's own inspector general, who wrote training for guards had been modified or eliminated, without federal oversight, at the nation's nuclear weapons plants.

The Department of Energy has already started minimizing the number of sites that have nuclear weapons material, moving plutonium from the Rocky Flats site in Colorado to Savannah River.

However, the site was only mentioned once during the 45-minute speech, when Abraham mentioned the ongoing effort to remove nuclear material from and decontaminate SRS's F-canyon building.

Clements said consolidation means South Carolina residents need to be prepared for many tons more plutonium coming to the state for the foreseeable future.

"This is part of a plan by the Department of Energy to get people in South Carolina used to the fact that Savannah River is likely to receive a lot of plutonium into facilities that were not built to store that material," he said.

"Savannah River is looking at a massive increase in the amount of plutonium that will be stored at the site, so much more focused attention in upgrading the security force at the site to protect the material," he added.

There were no specific recommendations made about security at SRS.

The changes were mostly directed at the 11 nuclear weapons sites and nuclear national laboratories, but some will take effect across the entire agency. Many, Abraham said, will be enacted by the end of the year.

To minimize the risk of nuclear material falling into terrorist hands, Abraham said the nation should remove nuclear material from places like the Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. At other sites like the Y-12 site in Tennessee, he said plutonium and enriched uranium will be consolidated so security can defend a smaller area.

"We need to but reduce the sites where special nuclear material is located to the absolute minimum and to consolidate the material at each of those sites to better safeguard that material," he said.

Saying the agency is "increasingly aware of cyber threats," Abraham said there will be more no-notice testing and probing of computer security. The agency will also go to "diskless" computers within the next five years so no insider can remove classified data on a disk or CD.

His cyber security initiative, to be put into effect within the next year, would deploy intrusion-detection systems to guard against potential cyber attacks, improve procedures to guard against Internet threats and enhance security of online information.

Citing past problems with computer disks and hard drives containing classified information, Abraham said diskless workstations would allow sensitive functions such as weapons design to be performed in a more secure environment.

Abraham said he has also ordered several physical changes to security, including eliminating the use of mechanical keys from throughout the system and replacing them with key card or biometric locks — like those opened by fingerprint or retina eye scans.

In response to the Inspector General's march report, he said training and security staffing will be better coordinated and there will be more "force to force exercises."

The department has also been criticized for not training against a sophisticated, coordinated attack like the September 11 terrorist attacks — 20 terrorists striking in different places at once. Abraham said there will be yearly re-examinations of what kinds of threats security forces will be asked to repel.

More, and better coordinated, training will allow the nation's nuclear security officers to be considered an elite unit — like the Delta Force, the Navy SEALs or the Army Rangers.

"The (Department of Energy) complex deserves the highest levels of security," he said. "We must have the most robust and effective defense force in the world."

Jason Zacher covers the environment and natural resources. He can be reached at 298-4272.