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Nuclear personnel asleep at Oak Ridge National Laboratory?

Vulnerable U.S. Nuclear Weapons Site Faces Allegations of Snoozing Security Guard Potential Pattern of Fatigue Among Wackenhut Nuclear Personnel
Project on Government Oversight (POGO) 25 Jan 12, By MIA STEINLE
The security contractor for the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is investigating reports that one of its security guards was sleeping and had also been using an unauthorized cell phone while they were supposed to be guarding a sensitive nuclear facility with bomb-grade material.

Photos of the alleged incident were sent to Wackenhut Security Inc.’s (WSI) Oak Ridge unit, the Energy Department, and the Knoxville News Sentinel, which broke the story Tuesday.
The photos were allegedly taken inside Building 3019, which raises “the additional issue of who took photographs inside a high-security nuclear installation,” according to the News Sentinel. Building 3019 stores about a half-ton of uranium-233, which POGO Senior Investigator Peter Stockton said today in a statement is roughly the amount needed for 250 improvised nuclear detonations.

“Perhaps the most egregious part of all this is that the Energy Department is allowing Wackenhut to investigate the latest security lapse itself,” Stockton said. “This is too important to leave up to Wackenhut.” WSI is commonly known as Wackenhut. In 2002, the Florida company was acquired by a Danish corporation and is now officially known in the U.S. as G4S Secure Solutions.

Wackenhut has a history of sleeping security guards. “It was Wackenhut that in 2007 initially denied that its guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were sleeping on the job—that is until the company was confronted with a video of the guards that was leaked to the media,” Stockton said. In the wake of that scandal, Wackenhut lost its contract with Exelon to manage security at ten nuclear power plants, according to a Washington Post article.

POGO called Oak Ridge National Laboratory a “high risk” as early as 2006 for its inadequate security, and also found that Wackenhut security guards at the nearby Y-12 National Security Complex were overworked to the point of severe fatigue.    http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2012/01/vulnerable-us-nuclear-weapons-site-faces-allegations-of-snoozing-security-guard.html

January 26, 2012 - Posted by | incidents, USA

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