March 17, 2014

Y-12 PROTESTERS ARRAIGNED AFTER STUNNING WEEKEND BREAK-IN

By ExchangeMonitor

Three protesters who broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex’s highest security area over the weekend were arraigned yesterday in an Eastern Tennessee district court and are facing a $100,000 fine and up to a year in jail connected to federal trespassing charges. The activists dubbed the “Transform Now Plowshares”—Michael R. Walli, 63, of Washington, D.C.; Sister Megan Rice, 82, of Nevada; and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, of Duluth, Minn.—will be held until a preliminary hearing Thursday as prosecutors argued that the protestors went further than any activist had ever gone in reaching the inner sanctum of the nation’s enriched uranium depository. Once there, the protesters allegedly spray-painted messages on the walls of the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, draped banners and splashed human blood onto the premises as a protest against plans to spend additional billions on weapons production.

The incident has begun to generate concern among watchdog groups and some lawmakers. An NNSA spokesman confirmed that the inner-most portion of the plant had never before been penetrated, which led Project on Government Oversight investigator Peter Stockton to suggest that “Boy Scouts could have done a better job” than security contractor WSI-Oak Ridge. WSI declined to comment on the incident, referring all questions to NNSA. “The first thing that needs to happen is the Department of Energy’s independent Office of Health, Safety, and Security needs to send a team to find out what went so terribly wrong,” Stockton said. “This episode should be a death knell for efforts in Congress to turn oversight of security and safety at nuclear facilities over to contractors for self-policing.”

With details of the incident still emerging, Congressional aides expressed concern about the incident, but were also cautious to withhold judgment until more is known. Aides reached by NW&M Monitor said that they expected a briefing from NNSA later this week, but suggested that the issues could be remedied through existing contracts and should be used if appropriate. “We’re going to review what happened, why it happened and what steps were taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” the aide said. Still, the incident triggered some disbelief among aides. “If an 82-year-old lady can trigger the alarm and make it to one of the buildings, that’s a fairly serious thing,” the aide said. “Even though the building is built like Fort Knox, you shouldn’t be able to make it that far. What if it was something real? That’s what people will be concerned about.”

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