UK Nuke plant report error in Plutonium bookkeeping

Plutonium books don't balance at UK plant , Nature News, Feb 17

"The Sellafield plant for reprocessing nuclear fuel in northwest England is unable to account for about 30 kilograms of the plutonium it handled in 2004. That amount would be enough to make seven nuclear bombs.

There is no evidence that this material has been lost from the Sellafield site, which is managed by British Nuclear Fuels. It may not even exist, having been conjured up simply by accounting errors.

But that is not the point, says British nuclear-weapons expert Frank Barnaby, formerly of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston, UK. If Sellafield officials were asked to prove that the 'missing' plutonium had not been smuggled off the site, he says, they would not be able to do so.

The discrepancy shows that "you cannot safeguard a reprocessing plant effectively", Barnaby says. "I'm pretty certain security is not stringent enough to defeat a determined group who sets out to steal the radioactive material.""
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/0502...050214-14.html

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