WATCHDOGS: “IMMENSE” PLUTONIUM INVENTORY WOES

There’s an “immense dis­crep­ancy in the accounts for how much plu­to­nium” is being kept at Los Alamos, a team of watch­dog groups is charg­ing.
In a let­ter to lab direc­tor Pete Nanos, the groups note that, in 1996, top energy offi­cials “pre­pared a mem­o­ran­dum detail­ing plu­to­nium account­ing dis­crep­an­cies through­out the nuclear weapons com­plex.“
“That] mem­o­ran­dum shows that the security-​​related nuclear mate­ri­als accounts do not agree with the waste accounts. The Department of Energy reported a dis­charge to waste from [Los Alamos] of 610 kilo­grams of plu­to­nium; Los Alamos indi­cates a fig­ure of 1,375 kilo­grams… Evidently, there is a dis­crep­ancy of 765 kilo­grams, the equiv­a­lent of 150 nuclear weapons…
“To the best of our knowl­edge, LANL has yet to explain the large plu­to­nium account­ing dis­crep­ancy or address its secu­rity impli­ca­tions.” (empha­sis mine)

August 12th, 2004 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.