[ISN] Security Questions Are Raised by Break-In at a Nuclear Site

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/us/pacifists-who-broke-into-nuclear-weapon-facility-due-in-court.html

By MATTHEW L. WALD and WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times
August 7, 2012

WASHINGTON -- An 82-year-old nun and two fellow pacifists who penetrated 
the defenses of one of the nation’s most important nuclear weapons 
facilities last week are due in federal court in Knoxville, Tenn., on 
Thursday to face charges of trespassing and spray-painting antiwar 
slogans on a building that houses nuclear bomb fuel. But the incident 
has also put the Department of Energy’s security system on trial.

The security breach, at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, has prompted the 
Department of Energy to reappraise security measures across its nuclear 
weapons program and private experts to criticize the agency’s 
safeguarding of nuclear stockpiles.

The activists, who got past fences and security sensors before dawn on 
July 28, apparently spent several hours in the Y-12 National Security 
Complex before they were stopped -- by a lone guard, they told friends 
-- as they used a Bible and candles in a Christian peace ritual. In a 
telephone interview, Sister Megan Gillespie Rice, of Las Vegas, said she 
was not sure exactly how long they were there. “It was dark; we couldn’t 
see our watches,” she said.

The problem for the National Nuclear Security Administration is how 
outsiders were able to get so close to more than 100 tons of highly 
enriched uranium, a material that could make thousands of atom bombs or 
be used by intruders to create a nuclear explosion on the spot. The 
security administration is a division of the Energy Department that was 
created to oversee the weapons program after security breaches were 
discovered in 1999. An administrator was fired in 2007 after additional 
security problems cropped up.

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