If you’re nervous about nuclear security you might want to stop reading now, the following will not be reassuring.

A new report from the US Congressional watchdog questions the security situation at a number of research reactors and raises the unpleasant spectre of terrorism. Another report from the same body also highlights just how many security problems there have been at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

There are 37 nuclear research reactors in the United States and of these 33 are regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office questions the assessment the NRC has made of terrorism risk.

It suggests the commission has not considered some of the most damaging types of potential attacks and not considered that large amounts of radioactive material could be released. “NRC’s security assessment may underestimate the potential consequences of an attack because it used assumptions and analyses about reactor security and terrorist capabilities that we believe are questionable,” warns the report (report summary, report pdf).

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the NRC is not happy with the report, saying it contains “inaccuracies, misrepresentation, and unsupported assumptions”. The row is getting some press attention (CNN, NY Times).

On to the other report, in which the GAO summarises recent security breaches at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. According to the Albuquerque Journal (via the LANL the rest of the story blog), “Some of the problems have been reported before, including the discovery of classified documents in a lab worker’s home in October 2006. But many of the revelations, including the nuclear safety violations, are new.”

In total the report details 57 security incidents from October 2002 to June 2007. “Thirty-seven (or 65 percent) of these reported incidents posed the most serious threat to U.S. national security interests,” it states.

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