Secret US List of Civil Nuclear Sites Released

eldavojohn writes "Someone accidentally released a 266-page report on hundreds of sites in the US for stockpiling and storing hazardous nuclear materials for civilian use. While some ex-officials and experts don't find it to be a serious breach, the Federation of American Scientists are calling it a 'a one-stop shop for information on US nuclear programs.' The document contains information about Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia, and opinions seem to be split on whether it's a harmless list or terrorist risk. One thing is for sure: it was taken down after the New York Times inquired to the Government Accountability Office about it."

Comments

glad they took it down.....

[Shakrai]

Now nobody will ever be able to find it ;)

Re:glad they took it down.....

[Ethanol-fueled]

Oh, well. At least they still have Google Earth to tell them, "Hey, terrorists, don't look here. There's nothing sekrit about our blurred base, move along."

Re:glad they took it down.....

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Obama_IAEA_nuclear_sites_declaration_for_the_United_States%2C_draft%2C_267_pages%2C_5_May_2009

Re:glad they took it down.....

[overcaffein8d]

Maybe the people who built the building didn't do it right, and the building itself is blurry.

jesus

[ilblissli]

how in the hell have there been so many serious leaks like this recently? why is no one being held accountable?

Re:jesus

[notarockstar1979]

I can only answer one of those. There are so many serious leaks because people aren't being held accountable. Hang someone in the public square for it (figuratively) and make an example of them. Others will secure their data pretty quickly.

Re:jesus

[sillybilly]

Some people in the Dept of Fatherland Security are really bored, because there is not enough action, and it's hard for them to justify their jobs. They can't find people skilled enough to build a bomb, who can be motivated or pissed off enough to do so, even with superhuman effort on their part. People who are smart enough simply won't do it. Because if they did that would be the ultimate excuse to take all your freedoms away, because the antiterrorism message today is falling on deaf ears, and people prefer having their freedoms instead.

Even terrorists fight for some kind of cause, and sometimes the price is too high to pay for advancing your cause. I don't see homegrown US nuclear terrorists, because of the few that happened, one denied things, so that might have been a setup, another did a manifesto and just wanted attention, and the rest all came from the middle east. The only place I can really see that much hatred between neighbors is the middle east, and they might come over here, if they were angered enough, and had the technology in hand. Iran might be cocky and demanding at international conferences, but for them to pull the trigger would be an immediate suicide. The real issue is them supplying others who are angered enough, and whatever will be will be. India and Pakistan have been going at it, and they could have used the stuff, and they continue to get angered against each other, but the nuclear trigger hasn't been pulled yet, and hopefully never will be. Ideally people should stop angering each other to the point where they are willing to kill each other. There should be a way where both you and I can find room and place in this world to coexist or be far enough to leave each other alone. That means sacrifice and compromise on both side.

For instance, me, I really believe in reducing dependence on oil, and driving less, but unfortunately the only way to really find peace is to run away far from any neighbours, and driving a lot over it. That's a large sacrifice, but still preferable to standing your ground and fighting, or trying to convince someone to change their mind. I prefer peace at almost any sacrifice. And I'd like to think so do most people in the world, it takes a tremendous amount of either tresspassing for people to generate enough hate, or selfishness for yourself/family/tribe/nation/etc.. uncaring of those outside of it, for committing enough trespassing so that killing to starts happening as a retaliation.

"for civilian use"

[wjh31]

there is a huge difference between nuclear material for civilian use, and weapons grade stuff. Even if some terrorists were able to get a-hold of civilian nuclear material they probably wouldnt be able to make a nuke. Having said that, a dirty bomb requires no expertese atall

Re:"for civilian use"

[Big Hairy Ian]

I just loved the 3 sites mentioned in the summary did anyone not know they were in the Nuclear industry??? You are correct though even if they did get their hands on Civilian Nuclear materials (Even the top end stuff) they wouldn't be able to make anything more than a dirty bomb. One quibble on that front though many of these facilities also produce Nuclear materials for the military. I'm sure they are only ever stored in small quantities before being shipped off somewhere that's actually secret i.e. not on this list but it's still a potential risk.

Re:"for civilian use"

[dubiago]

There were some pretty hefty reassurances during the Clinton Administration about the nature of nuclear proliferation when they gave North Korea nuclear reactors; they'd never make nuclear weapons as a result of having the reactors. Flash forward to a week ago, and they've detonated a ~20KT nuclear device. Some of this may just be the government playing C.Y.A., and flashing a "Don't Panic" sign. And, as you point out, dirty bombs aren't that hard to make. They may not have the bang that their fission/fusion cousins have, but they'll certainly make you miserable.

Re:"for civilian use"

[vivaoporto]

The point of terrorism is to create terror, not necessarily by killing people or destroying large infrastructures. A single attack on a civilian nuclear facility, even if it didn't destroy or damage anything sensitive, could be enough to fuel the opponents of nuclear power and set the nuclear energy industry on the USA 50 more years back.

Re:"for civilian use"

[ubersoldat2k7]

Dirty bombs are just too cumbersome. Radiation levels on that stuff are just way to high for some lunatic's bomb engineer to handle, are hard to transport and easily detectable.

Re:"for civilian use"

[vivaoporto]

although I'm sure it would be back to normal once people had forgotten about it.

Not really. The Three Mile Island accident was a mild, harmless incident in a nuclear energy facility but it is still used by nuclear energy opponents to denounce the "harms and perils" of the nuclear power.

Re:"for civilian use"

[Qzukk]

Having said that, a dirty bomb requires no expertese atall

Having said that, a dirty bomb requires nothing more than a few dozen smoke detectors, and if They didn't want to pay for it, the wal-mart down the street almost certainly has lower security than any of the facilities listed.

"The List" doesn't tell most people anything they couldn't already find out themselves if they wanted to (oh look, I can buy this stuff online).

Re:"for civilian use"

[Anonymous Coward]

set the nuclear energy industry on the USA 50 more years back

You mean we'd start building reactors again?

Re:"for civilian use"

[dave420]

The point of terrorism is to coerce people, pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less. The method of terrorism, however, are as you stated - by using violence or the threat of violence.

Re:"for civilian use"

[vlm]

Oh that irony: "Mild, harmless incident". Three Mile Island nearly blew off as later Chernobyl [wikipedia.org] - it was just luck that the crew found the error before.

Flat out blatant scaremongering misinformation.

Chernobyl used graphite as a moderator. Purified coal. Burns great. Perfect way to vaporize the fuel all over the countryside. No problem getting the smoke out of the containment dome, since they didn't have one.

TMI, like pretty much all non-Russian plants, uses water as a moderator. Not exactly a great fuel for vaporizing fuel rods. Containment dome designed to hold specifically for this situation. It worked as designed. Mild and harmless because it was designed to fail that way, and did.

I wont even bother listing differences like positive vs negative void coefficients that acted in our favor.

Also it was not luck that the TMI guys found the stuck valve... The third shift would have sat on their hinders all day in mystification because they had an inaccurate preconceived notion as to what is going on due to some broken equipment. Maybe they would have figured it out eventually, if they drank enough coffee, maybe not. However, the first shift guys came in with no preconceived notions to dispel, looked at all the gauges, more or less said "WTF were you thinking?", and shut it all down no problemo pretty much instantly.

Re:"for civilian use"

[vlm]

Having said that, a dirty bomb requires nothing more than a few dozen smoke detectors,

No need for that, a granite countertop will do. Many granites are quite strongly radioactive compared to background radiation and are easily detectable using off the shelf geiger counters.

Alpha emitter smoke detectors will not work. Alphas are great for smoke detectors, after all, smoke isn't very dense, so there is a huge signal difference between "clean" and "smokey" air. But that makes it too hard to detect from far away, like more than a foot or so. Wave a cheap beta/gamma-only counter a couple feet away, hear nothing.

So, all you need for a dirty bomb is blow up a granite countertop (or tombstone) and tell the media it's something ... else ... and for a good time they should wave a counter over the dust.

You don't need an unsafe level of radiation for a dirty bomb, after all, that is a huge pain to deal with. All you need is something that clicks a bit more than average on TV. Click-click-click-click-click on the evening news.

Making radioactive contamination takes a heck of a lot more radioactive stuff than merely making radio-clicky-terror on TV. Even if you somehow got the good stuff, better to make a hundred harmless but very clicky "attacks" than one real genuinely dangerous attack.

Doesn't everyone know this? This seems terribly obvious.

Re:"for civilian use"

[richard.cs]

While it's defiantly much harder to make a bomb from civilian nuclear material it's still possible and I'd guess a few skilled engineers (with no regard for their long-term health) could make one in less than 6 months. Spent nuclear fuel contains plutonium which is far easier to separate than the different isotopes of uranium as it can be done by chemical means. The plutonium would be heavily contaminated with Pu-240 which would cause some, not insurmountable, problems.

Implosion devices are out since they're so complicated to design and build which leaves us with the gun type bomb. This is usually considered impractical since the spontaneous fission of the Pu-240 causes the core to blow apart before it's maximum density is reached (fizzle), however a gun type device can be made, it just has to be much longer in order to bring the halves of the core together in a short enough time. This makes it impractical to drop from an aircraft or mount on a missile but such a device could be assembled inside, for example, a high rise office block on a floor chosen to match the airburst altitude for expected yield.

The bomb would probably still fizzle and produce a yield maybe a tenth that if pure Pu-239 could be used but that would be enough, maybe somewhere in the region of one kilo tonne.

Having said that I don't think that this list leaking is of much significance, all of this information was already available.

Re:"for civilian use"

[sumdumass]

Three mile island was a design failure that has been addressed and fixed. The coolant leak which resulted in low coolant causing resulted in the wrong procedures being implemented and the suspect of faulty sensors. We now measure coolant levels not only in the feed, but in transition through the piping before and after the reactor. There are backup coolant lines to boot.

The entire issue that was behind TMI has been addresses and implemented into all other facilities and the type of incident has never been repeated.

I think the big picture is that once they realized the sensors wasn't at fault and the problem was a lack of coolant verses ineffective coolant-bad readings, figured out a plan, vented for safety and enacted the plan to control the reactor, the biggest problem was the lack of ability to evacuate the surrounding and potentially effected population. Roads were jammed, many people had no immediate transportation and the traffic problems was making it difficult to get buses into the area. The Three mile Island accidence is pretty much impossible to happen again, but it showed how impossible it was to protect the people at the same time.

Re:"for civilian use"

[vux984]

I vote for taking out North Korea today. I'd rather have a 100,000+ casualties today if it can prevent the likely horrific death of 20 million+ later.

What if it can't? What if it just sends the millions of survivors into the death-to-america mindset instead, providing anti-american terrorists a flood of recruits, labor, and funding. And a few years they detonate a nuke in a major city anyway.

"Take out X", that only creates more terrorism, unless you plan to exterminate everyone on the planet but you.

The way to end terrorism is a process of building bridges, not blowing them up.

You will never get it completely gone -- there will always be extremists that can't be reasoned with but, but killing innocent people just swells their ranks instead of diminishing them.

Re:"for civilian use"

[paeanblack]

Three mile island was a design failure that has been addressed and fixed. The coolant leak which resulted in low coolant causing resulted in the wrong procedures being implemented and the suspect of faulty sensors. We now measure coolant levels not only in the feed, but in transition through the piping before and after the reactor. There are backup coolant lines to boot.

There will be another Three Mile Island-scale accident in the future
There will be another Exxon Valdez
There will be another Cleveland East
There will be another Tay Bridge, Tacoma Narrows, and Hyatt Regency
There will be another Bhopal
There will be another Tenerife, Saudia Tristar, and Aloha 243
There will be another St Francis Dam
There will be another Titanic

There will be another Chernobyl

Industrial/Engineering/Transportation disasters will continue to happen in every industry. Nuclear power is not immune.

However, arguing against nuclear power on that basis alone is like arguing against bridges and airplanes because they collapse and crash and kill people.

I think the big picture is that once they realized the sensors wasn't at fault and the problem was a lack of coolant verses ineffective coolant-bad readings, figured out a plan, vented for safety and enacted the plan to control the reactor, the biggest problem was the lack of ability to evacuate the surrounding and potentially effected population.

All of the disasters above have a commonality: people making decisions on incomplete information, because of the malfunction/poor maintenance of sensors/simple parts or the system entering an unanticipated state. Most of the time that this happens, people make the right decision, and the public doesn't hear about it. Sometimes the wrong decisions are made and people die.

The Three mile Island accidence is pretty much impossible to happen again

The exact same confluence of events that caused TMI will happen again and again. The technology will be different, but the people will be the same. The way to extend the intervals between major disasters is not be studying where the technology went wrong, but where the people went wrong. We'll never build another TMI-design reactor again, so the technical details are moot.

Re:"for civilian use"

[Chris Mattern]

That Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were completely different nuclear plants was not the point:

No, it's exactly the point.

The point was that Chernobyl exploded and caused many casualties and a highly contaminated environment, while Three Mile Island had luck.

No, Three Mile Island made several critical design decisions that prevented a massive disaster, and it had operators who could understand what they were looking at. That is not luck. That is the opposite of luck.

Not secret!

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez person writing the submission. RTFM. The list was not "secret". The guy clearly says that the list was only "sensitive" and could have been compiled from various public sources. He also clearly says that the breach was more embarrassing than a security problem.

Mirror

[Eddy Luten]

Since there's no link in TFA, here it is on WikiLeaks.

Scary

[Peteyo311]

I am I the only one that thinks this is a very odd list to have "accidentally" released?

Re:Scary

[Ortega-Starfire]

Yes, Obama accidentally the document.

Here is the document blurb:

To the Congress of the United States:
I transmit herewith a list of the sites, locations, facilities, and activities
in the United States that I intend to declare to the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), under the Protocol Additional
to the Agreement between the United States of America and
the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of
Safeguards in the United States of America, with Annexes, signed
at Vienna on June 12, 1998 (the ''U.S.-IAEA Additional Protocol''),
and constitutes a report thereon, as required by section 271 of Public
Law 109-401. In accordance with section 273 of Public Law
109-401, I hereby certify that:
(1) each site, location, facility, and activity included in the
list has been examined by each department and agency with
national security equities with respect to such site, location, facility,
or activity; and
(2) appropriate measures have been taken to ensure that information
of direct national security significance will not be
compromised at any such site, location, facility, or activity in
connection with an IAEA inspection.
The enclosed draft declaration lists each site, location, facility,
and activity I intend to declare to the IAEA, and provides a detailed
description of such sites, locations, facilities, and activities,
and the provisions of the U.S.-IAEA Additional Protocol under
which they would be declared. Each site, location, facility, and activity
would be declared in order to meet the obligations of the
United States of America with respect to these provisions.
The IAEA classification of the enclosed declaration is ''Highly
Confidential Safeguards Sensitive''; however, the United States regards
this information as ''Sensitive but Unclassified.''
Nonetheless, under Public Law 109-401, information reported to,
or otherwise acquired by, the United States Government under this
title or under the U.S.-IAEA Additional Protocol shall be exempt
from disclosure under section 552 of title 5, United States Code.
BARACK OBAMA.

-----
Amusingly, it is addressed to Congress. Which means it would have been leaked PDQ regardless.

Re:Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

Most important part:

"Sensitive but Unclassified"

Atom experts say it is not such a big deal as the information revealed was already roughly known.
Source: My local news website.

It was a draft for the IAEA (International Atom Energy Agency).

Re:Scary

[Speare]

The document was properly marked with "sensitive" flags, and the Government Printing Office posted it in error. GPO is part of the Legislative Branch, staffed by career civil servants, not political appointees. So saying that Obama's administration released it to the public is quite a stretch.

Re:Scary

[skeeto]

Yes, Obama accidentally the document.

Did he accidentally the whole thing?

it is kind of a no big deal

[circletimessquare]

say the list was kept perfectly secret. as if no one who intends harm couldn't ferret out where the sites are. its not as if the sites are very mobile, most have been there for decades

and none of the material is easily weaponized. well, you could build a dirty bomb. but if you were building a dirty bomb, it would be easier to shop used medical equipment. perhaps from outside the country. i'm sure you could find some old radiology equipment in latin america and sneak it over the mexican border undetected. line it with lead and drive it in. pack it with some dynamite in a city center: boom, instant radioactive times square

finally, even if the sites were kept secret, they still need to be guarded. that's the real safeguard

although the list does allow those who intend to do harm confirmation of sites, and an ability to triage which is easier than another to attempt to breach

Let's be really honest here...

[DragonTHC]

If a clandestine organization has the funds, logistics, and operatives to carry out an attack on these facilities, they already know about them.

Who didn't know about los alamos, livermore, or sandia?

Re:Let's be really honest here...

[vlm]

Or any hospital with a radiology department, or any college offering a nuclear energy engineering degree, etc.

What's actually going on is a battle inside the government over how to excuse our defenses using two diametrically opposed strategies. Its good to see a failure of cooperation in the government, that gives some hope to the citizens.

One govt spokes-clown talks up inadequate defenses by making fun of the opposition. The idea is to compare the opposition to a bad mork and mindy episode or some other "make fun of the foreigner" cultural phenomenon. The purposed of the propaganda is to spread the idea that the opposition is too stupid to figure out where the target is because they aren't smart like us americans. Even the dumbest american knows, if you're looking for a sensitive target to attack, merely look for the "blurred" areas on google maps, but a dumb furriner could never figure that out. So, its OK that our defenses are no good, since our fiercest opponent is only Mork from Ork as portrayed by Robin Williams.

On the other hand some government clowns like to excuse inadequate defenses by claiming the opposition was stronger than the bad guy in a james bond movie. I actually saw one govt spokes-clown on TV after 9-11 rambling on about how it must have taken an extremely large amount of money, unbelievable training, and immense organizational skills to do the 9-11 attacks. Which is pretty stupid since fundamentally all they did was buy a couple airline tickets for the same day, about as astounding as any convention organizer. That propaganda has the purpose of making us feel OK that our defenses fail because the "others" are so strong.

So much xenophobia, expressed so many different ways....

Oddly the two propaganda crowds seem to fight each other because they pompously think their BS is better that the other guys BS. So this story is really that the "dumb furriner crowd", whom thought it would be funny propaganda to list all the obvious targets that no stoopid furriner could ever figure out but all red blooded americans obviously already know thus proving the furriners is dumb, is under heavy attack from the "james bond villian crowd" whom is doing the scare mongering thing by claiming the only protection we have is goldfinger doesn't know where our "gold" is located...

This would not happen in the UK....

[Chrisq]

We have a cunning plan to swamp terrorists with so many laptops, USB keys, DVDs, unformatted second-hand computers, external hard drives, secret documents held up to press photos, and so on that the chances of them finding anything of use top them among all the rest of the leaked data is insignificant.

Civil Nuclear Sites?

[vampire_baozi]

As the Times article pointed out, and from the looks of the PDF, most of this stuff was public domain already. All they did was assemble it into a nice condensed form for the IAEA. While documents that aren't supposed to be getting released getting released is clearly a process failure, this one doesn't seem particularly serious. On the scale of data leakages, far less harmful than the British government's loss of data discs containing personal information.

Given that most of the data was already public domain, beyond knowing specifically where the stuff is, what is new here? Figure out where the publication process went wrong, and how it got approved, and then take steps to fix the problem. Gov't snafu's are par for the course, and givin it was a civil report for the IAEA, looks like a minor leak if that.

I hardly forsee people trying to make dirty bombs from this stuff. As WikiLeaks notes, this information is far more useful to environmentalists than terrorists or foreign governments (to whom we're handing the info anyway via IAEA).

Re:/. wants the terrorists to win

[Chrisq]

We're geeks. We don't care if the terrorists win, just so long as Microsoft doesn't.

Re:incompetent government agency of an incompetent

[Anonymous Coward]

The government has recently been a circus of one distraction after another. If they really wanted yet another distraction all they'd have to do is leak info about Sotomayor being a socialist (or a lesbian or an atheist, etc.) and the media wouldn't touch a real issue for months. Not that it matters. The American people are so inundated with manufactured outrage that we wouldn't know a genuine scandal if it bit us on the nose.

hey guys...

[Dramacrat]

I accidentally the whole 266-page report. Is that dangerous?

Re:hey guys...

[Kryis]

The last person to the whole 266-page report had to spend 3 weeks before they finally.

if this wasn't posted AC

[oneTheory]

i'd say you should be modded up.

So that is how Luke found out.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I always wondered how Luke figured out where the secret entrance to the nuclear reactor providing power to the shield to the Death Star during construction. Now there is a plausible scenario how he got it.

put down your pitchforks

[commodoresloat]

If you vigilantes sit still for a second and actually RTFA you'll see that there aren't any "national secrets" that were leaked here -- this information was "sensitive" and its release is embarrassing at best, but hardly a hanging offense.

On another note, I wonder if you felt the same way about the leak of a covert agent's identity during the Bush Administration? Were you hoping to see Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, or Dick Cheney in a noose?

Re:put down your pitchforks

[stonewallred]

Actually with Cheney, I wanted a wooden stake through his heart, beheaded and buried face down in the middle of a cross road. Just to be sure.

The real problem here

[Joebert]

Someone accidentally released a 266-page report on hundreds of sites in the US for stockpiling and storing hazardous nuclear materials for civilian use.

I think the real problem here is that there are nuclear materials being stockpiled for civilian use !

DOE ....Thanks for update...

[FirstOne]

A quick scan of the .pdf file indicates..

Prototype Sodium cooled Fast reactor is wayyy off in the distant future 2020-2030 depending on funding. (Joint project with France and Japan.)

No projects involving thorium are on the drawing board.
A couple of projects involving reprocessing spent fuel.

That indicates that Nuclear power industry will likely be SOL by the end of the century, as the higher grade U-ore depsoits are mined out.