Security lapses at nuclear complex identified two years before break-in

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/security-lapses-at-nuclear-complex-identified-two-years-before-break-in/2012/09/11/7cd3d5fa-fc5e-11e1-a31e-804fccb658f9_story.html

By Dana Priest
The Washington Post
September 11, 2012

Nearly two years before peace activists broke into a U.S. nuclear 
weapons facility in late July, government investigators warned in 
classified reports of lax security at the complex where the nation’s 
largest concentration of weapons-grade uranium is stored.

The previously undisclosed 2010 criticism of the Y-12 National Security 
Complex near Oak Ridge, Tenn., found that security cameras were 
inoperable, equipment maintenance was sloppy and guards were poorly 
trained.

On July 28, an 82-year-old nun, an elderly gardener and a house painter 
slipped past security costing millions of dollars a year — sensors, 
cameras, barbed wire, heavy weaponry, roving patrols and dozens of 
guards — to reach the walls of a new uranium storage facility at Y-12. 
They splattered blood on the building and held up protest signs before 
being arrested.

Although the three intruders never got close to the nuclear material, 
which is kept behind 30-foot concrete walls and hidden gun ports, the 
break-in was a huge embarrassment for the National Nuclear Security 
Administration, the Department of Energy agency that manages the nuclear 
weapons stockpile and spends $1 billion a year securing it.

[...]

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