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A Nuclear Lapse

Keeper of the Nation's Nuclear Arsenal. Sounds like a daunting responsibility, doesn't it?

By Paul Roberts

July 01, 2004 — CSO — Keeper of the Nation's Nuclear Arsenal. Sounds like a daunting responsibility, doesn't it?

It is. And the weight of it all is shouldered by the Department of Energya group that has seen its share of humiliating security lapses. And, most recently, DoE was stung by a General Accounting Office report that charged it (and the National Nuclear Security Administration) with failing to adequately assess and address security shortfalls at its facilities.

DoE Secretary Spencer Abraham recently responded to mounting concern that the DoE was not adapting quickly enough to the post-9/11 world, and the secretary announced a number of initiatives to improve security across DoE facilities.

Among other things, Abraham said DoE would consolidate sensitive nuclear materials into a few DoE facilities, and improve IT and physical security at DoE sites. He even suggested federalizing security forces for high-security facilities.

The new DoE initiatives were greeted with guarded optimism by one of the agency's chief critics, Robin Nazzaro, GAO director for natural resources.

The DoE initiatives announced by Abraham are positive, Nazzaro says. However, the agency still faces considerable challenges to develop and pay for a comprehensive security plan.

Among other things, the DoE has to come to terms with what is known as the "postulated threat"the governmentwide standard for the designs and capabilities of potential terrorist forces based on information from the CIA, FBI and military.

In response to the government's postulated threat, each agency develops a Design Basis Threat, or DBT. The DBT allows agencies to measure, for example, their ability to withstand terrorist attacks.

The DBT for the DoE incorporated new understanding about threats on U.S. soil, from airplanes, as well as biological, chemical and nuclear devices. However, GAO worries that the agency is not coming clean about its desire to limit the costs associated with securing its facilities against what the government thinks is a realistic terrorist threat, and is, instead, setting the security bar lower than at other agencies, Nazzaro says.