Mission Impossible? Not for 82-year-old Anti-Nuclear Weapons Activist

Michael R. Walli, 63, Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, succeeded in a disarmament action at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Nuclear facility before dawn.

 

[Update: The federal contractor who runs the Y-12 facility has put the complex under a "security stand-down," the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. Click here to read more.]

By MIA STEINLE

When a nuclear weapons facility can’t stop infiltration by an octogenarian nun, it’s time to reassess its security standards.

The 82-year-old nun, accompanied by two other anti-nuclear activists, broke into Tennessee’s Y-12 National Security Complex early Saturday morning, the Knoxville News Sentinel first reported.

“The Department of Energy has repeatedly claimed that security at the site, which houses 300 to 400 metric tons of bomb-grade uranium, is robust enough to defend against more than a dozen heavily-armed terrorists with inside knowledge of security procedures” Peter Stockton, a nuclear security expert at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), ironically observed.

“It looks like the Boy Scouts could have done a better job” securing the site, he added.

After cutting through three fences surrounding the facility, the activists “posted a banner on one of the buildings and poured human blood on the premises,” the News Sentinel reported. The activists were arrested under federal trespassing charges and will remain in jail until a hearing this Thursday, according to the newspaper.

The Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration told the News Sentinel that the department’s inspector general is leading an investigation of the incident.

Stockton recommended that the department’s independent Office of Health, Safety, and Security also investigate “what went so terribly wrong” at Y-12.

The nuclear facility describes itself as “a premier manufacturing facility dedicated to making our nation and the world a safer place.” However, POGO has long warned the Department of Energy that its Y-12 facility is at a high risk for security breaches.

When the department increased security standards at its facilities in the years following 9/11, it granted exemptions to Y-12, effectively “lowering a hurdle to allow a sprinter to easily jump over it,” as POGO noted. Several years later, department security exercises revealed that intruders inside the facility’s fences could enter one of the uranium storage building in about 45 seconds, POGO reported.

What’s more, security guards at Y-12 have a history of literally sleeping on the job, as the News Sentinel reported in 2008 and 2012.

The guard force is provided by G4S Secure Solutions (formerly known as the Wackenhut Corp.), the self-proclaimed largest security contractor in the world. As the security provider of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, G4S made headlines earlier this summer when it failed to provide the promised number of security guards for the event, something the company agreed was "a humiliating shambles," the BBC reported.

Mia Steinle is an investigator at the Project On Government Oversight. Image of Transform Now Ploughshares activists and caption information from the Disarm Now Ploughshares blog.

Follow @miasteinle

Comments

[Mairead]

Those three should not only not be prosecuted, but should be given significant honoraria out of that site's budget for their work in exposing a gaping security lacuna.

But I bet they won't be. Naked kings never like to be told they've been suckered.

[Clement Salvadori]

Obviously the problem with that wacky Wackenhut/G4S insecurity disorganization was that it moved too many people out of the Tennessee trenches in order to bolster the troop levels in Trafalgar Square.

[Watchman]

And to think this was just ONE facility. How many others can this happen to? And will the next group to break in to such a facility be just activists? This is why security is such a joke at times! There should be regular checks on ALL security involving nuclear facilities everywhere in this country.

[ejmc]

Wonder if "Speznaz Nuns" are covered in the DOE Design Basis Threat Statement?

[Crow]

Definitely a case of divine intervention...

[Russ Wellen]

It concerns me that the spotlight on this story has become that Transform Now Ploughshares exposed security vulnerabilities at Y-12. That was hardly the purpose of their operation. Indeed, it was one of the bravest and most heroic acts of disarmament advocacy in years. The real threat is not the security at Y-12, it's nuclear warheads. (Russ Wellen, the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points: http://www.fpif.org/blog)

[cyberman]

The protection of nuclear information, nuclear materials and weapons under the oversight of the House and Senate committees and management of the Department of Energy and its contractors have long been dangerously compromised and managed incompetently from at least 1979. One of the chief problems has been the repeated compromises that come from an agency regulating itself. The AEC was broken up in part because the congress figured this out with the help of the public. Hence the birth of the NRC.

Here the situation has amply repeated itself but, as yet, with no resultant separation of the weapons program writ large, and, security. Unless there is an independent agency with a strict no revolving door policy staffed by excepted service career employees to the top in charge of DOE's security and this agency is properly staffed and funded, one of these times it will not be a nun it will be malefactors of now undeterminable origins who by now know just how vulnerable some of these critical facilities can be. Current publications describe how hard it wasn't for the representatives of the Communist Chinese Government to steal information from some U.S.D.O.E. Laboratories.

And most are aware the threats are not just from physical penetrations but from sophisticated technical means as well.

Is it time to take the "Nuclear Security" out of the National Nuclear Security Administration and locate it organizationally and independently whereas nuclear information, nuclear materials and nuclear weapons are protected correctly?

[Jean Standish]

Pathetic! It took 9/11 to wake this country up to the deficiency of airport security, although there are still problems. In fact, some foreign flight students are still not subject to terror database screening until after they've completed pilot training, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. What is it going to take to improve the security of our nuclear plants? It seems that the lights are on bur no one's at home.

[John Kelly]

A sister can sneak up on a misbehaving student in an open classroom. She was a natural for this.

The prosecutor should give sister Megan, Michael and Greg an award, not prosecution. It would be a gross miscarriage of justice and a waste of money if they were to be charged. After what they demonstrated about the sad state of "security" at that facility I will not be breathing easy. We could just ship the nuclear material to the terrorists and save the money it takes to pay for this kind of security.

[Jean Morningstar]

Instead of jailing these three you should be thanking them for pointing out this terrible lack of security.

[littlebadwolf]

yay, sister. send wakenwak to mother superior, or (gasp) to father's office.

[Cheryl]

After seeing how easily folks can hack into computers (Wikileaks, Anonymous, etc.), it doesn't surprise me at all that people could break into a nuclear facility. Security in this country seems to be more geared towards installing fear into and controlling the American people ... than it is in protecting us against foreign attackers. Also, when we hear how these places LIE about the safety of their facilities when some of their power plants are literally rusting away and ready to blow, nothing surprises me. There is secrecy everywhere to protect the corporations.

[Willis Richardson]

I will definitely sleep better tonight knowing the 82 year old nun is under wraps. The group must be part of an AARP terrorist cell. Ha. Ha.

[Jack]

Hey you can never let your guard down with these Geritol terrorists.

What a disgrace America has become to it's own people. These protesters should be given a Medal of honor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.

[Lo Lo Jones]

Since 9/11 there has been billions of dollars spent on security at Y12 and its all taxpayer money. If three retired hippies can sneak into the highest security area of the plant, something is wrong and somebody needs to be replaced. How much damage could a trained terrorist team have done ? Wackenhut is siphoning off millions of tax dollars and repaying us by putting the entire region at risk of nuclear calamity by not doing their job. Fire their a@@es.

[Nuclear Ninja]

These 3 individuals were able to do this because the security force in place are not authorized to shoot unarmed personell who have shown no hostile action. They have use of force guidlines that are very similar to what law enforcement use. If no lives are in danger they observe and interpose/interdict while waiting for local law enforcement to show up. If there was a legit threat to the facility someone would have been cleaning up what was left of the bodies with a mop. I would be willing to bet they had multiple rifles pointed at them waiting for a sign of hostile action. You can say what you want about the security company contracted to provide security for the site, but it sounds like they did things by the books.

[Lo Lo Jones]

Wackenhut at Y12 has been getting multi-million bonus award for their "excellent" security twice a year for the last ten years. This money is being handed out (wasted) by NNSA and being paid for by the US taxpayers. Wackenhut, GS4 or whatever you want to call them was also booted from the US embassy contract in Kabul as well as several other large contracts. Get these clowns out now!

[Skyhawkmaintainer]

Sleeping while on watch and the company was able to maintain its contract? You'd find your self in very deep kimchee if you slept on watch while on duty in the Navy.