Thursday, February 02, 2006
Uh...
While this sounds like a colossal waste of money, it might at least provoke some fun responses.
"A lot of people are willing to die if they can kill lots of Americans ... You want to make clear that when they come here to die (by attacking the lab), they die for a failure," the blunt-speaking [head of National Nuclear Security Administration Linton Brooks] said at a press conference at Livermore on Thursday, where he unveiled one of the guns.
Yeah, terrorists are going to steal plutonium via full-scale military assault. We'd better protect against that. Also, we have small penises.
But a lab critic called the plan a threat to innocent men, women and children, particularly with the facility located across the street from suburban homes. A better solution would be to investigate ways to remove the plutonium and other weapons-grade nuclear materials from the lab altogether, said Marylia Kelley, head of Tri Valley Cares, a Livermore anti-nuclear group.
"There are residential homes all up and down what is the western perimeter of Livermore lab," Kelley said. "You always see children on their bicycles or skateboards ... people walking their dogs ... You can't just indiscriminately open fire."
Uh... yeah, you can't. I don't think that's what the security plan calls for, though, so that's a pretty irrelevant objection. I like how the 'alternative' just happens to be capitulating to her long-standing demands.
Livermore lab is one of the nation's two nuclear weapons design labs, where, among other things, scientists study plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons. To carry out this task, the lab stores plutonium for research at a site called Building 332.
Hmm... strangely, I get the feeling that publishing that detail wasn't at all necessary for the story.
On Thursday, Brooks said he hadn't decided whether to increase the amount of plutonium stored at the lab. He defended the lab's continuing research on plutonium as essential to ensure that U.S. weapons scientists understand better what he characterized as the "nasty, ugly, complicated stuff with a metallurgy I don't pretend to understand."
There's something about this dude that bugs me. Referring to security as "your guys" in a discussion of strategy didn't help matters. This is stuff you'd expect to see at an online game forum. Maybe they should hire a seperate dude for PR.
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