Accounting for Plutonium at Los Alamos

Here’s a good example of how security doesn’t end at the gate, or in the hiring of trustworthy employees. It involves internal processes and accountability – something, admittedly, that’s very challenging at a plutonium lab. 

Even so, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing of late at the Energy Department over difficulties in accounting for plutonium stocks at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A memo at the lab, leaked in February, said that inaccurate inventory records there “raised doubts about the lab’s ability to ‘deter and detect theft and diversion of special nuclear material.’”

In short, plutonium stocks couldn’t be confidently accounted for. Why? The memo ascribes the problems to ”the lack of qualified and experienced personnel in critical positions; inattention to performance indicators; lack of an approved and compliant [nuclear material control and accountability] plan; lack of procedures for key processes; conduct of operations deficiencies; and inadequate quality assurance practices.”

In short, people and processes. 

Inventory records aside, Los Alamos officials appear confident that “there is 100 percent certainty that no sensitive materials left the facility.”  Sensors, monitors and control processes – security at the gates – “give us a high level of confidence that material has not left the facility,” an official said. 

But who can be entirely sure without internal processes that can’t help but affect a sense of security and, therefore, need to be considered as part of a security plan. Plutonium is especially hard to keep track of, in that nuclear material changes form during the production process.  

Two materials control managers have been removed and inventory controls are a big topic at the lab, no doubt. But this seems a good example of how security (at Los Alamos or anywhere else) needs to be approached not only systematically, but systemically, two similar sounding words with key dimensions of meaning.  Controls at the perimeter and processes and people inside.