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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."
Now nobody will ever be able to find it ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
how in the hell have there been so many serious leaks like this recently? why is no one being held accountable?
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
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.
Since there's no link in TFA, here it is on WikiLeaks.
I am I the only one that thinks this is a very odd list to have "accidentally" released?
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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?
They're using their grammar skills there.
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.
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).
We're geeks. We don't care if the terrorists win, just so long as Microsoft doesn't.
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.
I accidentally the whole 266-page report. Is that dangerous?
There are over 36 million lines of COBOL code in the world, and they are all raping children.
i'd say you should be modded up.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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?
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.