RECORD FINE FOR SECURITY BREACHES
JEFF JOHNSON · Chemical & Engineering News · 2007
MANAGEMENT OF Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will be fined $3.3 million because of past security breaches, the Department of Energy announced on July 13. The fines are a DOE record. The proposed fine for the University of California, which was the lab's sole manager from 1943 until June 2006, is $3 million. The rest of the penalty is directed to the consortium of entitle s that now run the lab, a group that includes UC as well as Bechtel National, BWX Technologies, and Washington Group International. In support of its multi-million-dollar penalty, DOE pointed to the discovery of classified material on a portable computer drive found in a worker's home in October 2006. DOE blamed this unauthorized removal of classified information on "deficiencies in the security controls established and implemented" by UC during its tenure as the lab's manager. The incident followed a string of lab security problems that took place over several years ...