A government office accidentally made public a report that gives detailed information about the nation's civilian nuclear sites and programs, but the disclosure didn't jeopardize national security, the Obama administration said late Tuesday.The report, which includes maps of facilities showing the locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons at those facilities, was posted last month on the Web site of the Government Printing Office. It was removed from the site late Tuesday, after the Federation of American Scientists reported on the document's existence Sunday in an online bulletin. The Obama administration prepared the document to comply with a decade-old international agreement aimed at providing the International Atomic Energy Agency with a comprehensive picture of the country's nuclear and nuclear-related activities. The U.S. made the agreement to encourage other countries to provide similar disclosure of their nuclear activities.
The document is marked "Highly Confidential Safeguards Sensitive." It was published on the GPO's Web site on May 22, according to Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the scientists' group. A cover letter on the document, addressed by President Barack Obama to Congress, calls the information "sensitive but unclassified."
In a written statement late Tuesday, Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that while administration officials "would have preferred it not be released, the Departments of Energy, Defense, and Commerce and the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] all thoroughly reviewed it to ensure that no information of direct national security significance would be compromised." Mr. LaVera's statement didn't specify how the document came to be made public by the GPO. A GPO spokesman couldn't be reached for comment. A White House spokesman echoed Mr. LaVera's statement.
Mr. Aftergood said he didn't regard the disclosure as constituting a serious security breach. "There's nothing in this document to put anyone in any jeopardy," he said.
The list details the existence of nuclear facilities at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and a Westinghouse research facility in Pittsburgh, among others.
"It's quite well known where our research and nuclear facilities are," Mr. Kimball said. This information has been out there for years."