Tri-Valley CAREs works to strengthen global security by stopping the development of new nuclear weapons in the US and by promoting the elimination of nuclear weapons globally. Tri-Valley CAREs monitors nuclear weapons and environmental clean-up activities throughout the US nuclear weapons complex, with a special focus on the Lawrence Livermore Lab and surrounding communities.
Livermore Lab bioweapons center debated in court
Jan12
Date: January 12, 2012
Published in: The San Francisco Chronicle
By: Bob Egelko
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2...
An opponent of the new biological weapons research center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told a federal appeals court Wednesday that government officials approved the project without fully considering the consequences of a possible terrorist attack or disclosing the details of a past release of anthrax.
Research at the center is intended to help the government detect biological pathogens such as anthrax, plague, brucellosis and Q fever. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the facility in 2006, saying the Department of Energy's environmental assessment had failed to study the possibility that terrorists could cause a release of deadly organisms.
The department took another look and found no significant danger from terrorism, a conclusion accepted by a federal judge who allowed the center to open in February 2009. But a lawyer for opponents argued Wednesday that the new review was perfunctory and violated the court's 2006 order.
Attorney Scott Yundt of the antinuclear group Tri-Valley CAREs assailed the Energy Department's main conclusions: that a terrorist attack would pose no greater danger than an accidental release due to equipment failure or an earthquake, which the previous study had considered; and that a theft and release of lethal substances by terrorists was too improbable to analyze.
"They didn't do an impact analysis of (those) credible terrorist events," Yundt told a three-judge panel, referring to possible thefts by outsiders or disgruntled employees.
He also said a separate Energy Department study recognized that an accident doesn't have the same impact as an intentional assault, a conclusion absent from the department's environmental review.
Justice Department lawyer Barclay Samford countered that the department properly found little risk to the public from the "very small amounts of pathogens" at the research center, even in the unlikely event of a terrorist attack.
"A purposeful plane crash would have the same effect as an accidental plane crash," and any microorganisms that escaped would be quickly destroyed by light and heat, Samford said. More than 1,000 U.S. laboratories handle pathogens, he said, and there's no evidence that "a terrorist attack is any more likely in Livermore than anywhere else."
Yundt replied that the Livermore facility is the only one located next to a nuclear weapons laboratory, a potential terrorist target.
He also said the department's report gave short shrift to a 2005 incident in which a former employee returned to the lab and mailed anthrax samples to two other facilities, where some of the samples leaked from their vials. There have been no allegations that the leak was deliberate or malicious.
The report described it as a shipping incident and did not mention anthrax or the monetary fine that was assessed against the department, Yundt said.
The panel did not indicate when or how it would rule, but Judge Milan Smith, the most active questioner of the trio, seemed unpersuaded by Yundt's arguments.
"There was no apparent attempt by the Department of Energy to evade discussion" of the anthrax incident, Smith said, noting that the report contained some details and solicited public comment.
Overall, he said, "the government did a whole lot of analysis. The question is, at what point is it enough?"
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/11/BAPM1MO460.DTL#ixzz1jHmnZhOh