[NukeNet] Attack on Livermore Bio-Lab Could Release Pathogens, 2 articles

[Marylia Kelley]

ATTENTION friends and colleagues:

The DOE has produced an extremely inadequate assessment of terrorism
impacts on its proposed new biowarfare agent research facility at the
Livemrore Lab main site (which is not to be confused with the OTHER new
biowarfare agent research facility the Lab wants to put at its Site 300).

YET, even this poorly done pseudo-analysis admits potentially catastophic
consequences in the event of an attack. Below are two excellent articles,
one from today's San Francisco Chronicle and one from the Tri-Valley Herald.

The link to the DOE's revised environmental assessment follows each of the
news articles.

If you can, please WRITE COMMENTS during the public comment period, which
ends May 11, 2007.

And, stay tuned! Tri-Valley CAREs will be posting more on this dangerous
plan to collocate "bugs and bombs" over the next few weeks.

Read on...

ARTICLE #1 -- San Francisco Chronicle
'Unlikely' attack at lab could release microbes, study says

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Thursday, April 12, 2007

"A suicidal plane crash" by terrorists could unleash into the environment
some of the world's scariest diseases from a proposed
killer-microbe lab at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. And a
saboteur inside the lab could conceivably set off a bomb that might
cause a "catastrophic" breach of all microbe containment systems, says a
federal study released Wednesday.

However, the U.S. Energy Department draft environmental assessment study
concludes that a direct terrorist assault on the facility is "highly
unlikely" to succeed. But because it acknowledges local activists' concerns
that catastrophic accidents are possible, it is now up the lab critics who
have sued to block the opening of the facility to consider whether to
pursue further court action, including a possible order to stop the
Livermore lab from opening the microbe facility.

The Livermore site already has a lower-level lab for investigating
microbial diseases, but the proposed new Biosafety Level 3 lab -- dubbed
BSL3 for short -- would store microbes of medieval scariness. They include
plague, botulism and Q fever, a bacterial disease that in its more virulent
form, chronic Q fever, kills up to 65 percent of its victims. The proposed
lab would also investigate anthrax.

In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the
Energy Department to conduct the environmental study following a suit by
Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment and Nuclear Watch
of New Mexico. Construction of the facility was finished in 2005, but it
hasn't opened pending the completion of litigation.

On Wednesday, lab critics responded with scorn to the long-awaited,
80-page environmental study.

"In the event of a rupture in the facility or other catastrophic
release, it could threaten the entire Bay Area," said Marylia Kelley,
head of Tri-Valley CARES. "During the summer, the winds move across the
metropolitan Bay Area toward San Francisco. Depending on the pathogen and
on how much is released, there could be up to 7,500 fatalities," according
to a scientific study that her group presented to the Court of Appeals last
year.

"They should not build (the bug lab) in the Bay Area," Kelley added.
"Not only is there a risk of terrorist attack or a 'disgruntled
employee' scenario, but there's the risk of a large earthquake."

The study was released by the U.S. National Nuclear Safety
Administration, which oversees the nation's nuclear weapons labs for the
Energy Department. It says it is "probable" that a fire caused by a
hypothetical plane crash or an explosion would destroy the potentially up
to 1 trillion microorganisms before they are blown by local winds over the
densely populated neighborhoods surrounding the nuclear weapons lab. Rapid
vaccination of local residents within 24 hours would provide added
protection, the study says.

The environmental study acknowledges that "dramatic human health impacts
and economic disruption can result following the release of pathogenic
materials," as in the 2001 case when anthrax was sent through the U.S.
mail. The study also says "it is not possible to accurately predict the
probability of intentional attacks at (Livermore) or at other critical
facilities, or the nature of these attacks. The number of scenarios is
large, and the likelihood of any type of attack is unknowable."

The study does not describe any potential scenarios for terrorist attacks
"because disclosure of this information could be exploited by terrorists to
plan attacks." Ironically, the report includes a map showing the precise
location of the microbe lab, in Building 360 on the Livermore lab site.

As a precaution against an accidental or deliberate release of the
microbes, "local hospitals and health care providers in the Livermore area
have been briefed by (Livermore lab) medical staff," the study says. To
protect against microbial escape into the neighborhood, "individuals could
be inoculated to prevent infection or treated to recover from exposure to a
known biological agent."

As a further precaution to catch intruders, "motion detectors have ... been
installed in the laboratories and mechanical rooms," at the lab, and
microbes "are kept in locked freezers when not in use."

Public feedback is welcome through May 11. Afterward, the Energy
Department will issue a final version of the environmental assessment.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online resources: To see the study about the microbe lab at Livermore lab,
go to: links.sfgate.com/ZCR <http://links.sfgate.com/ZCR>
Copies are also available at the public libraries in Livermore and Tracy,
and at the Public Reading Room of the nuclear security agency's branch
office in Livermore.
Chronicle<mailto:kdavidson at sfchronicle.com>

ARTICLE #2 -- Tri-Valley Herald/Fremont Argus/Oakland Tribune
Feds shrug off possibility of attack on biodefense lab

By Ian Hoffman,
Alameda Newspapers Group
04/12/2007

Federal authorities said the odds of a successful terrorist plot against a
new biodefense lab in Livermore are too uncertain and remote to calculate,
and that in any event the consequences of an attack or theft at the lab
would be manageable.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, ordered by a federal appeals
court last year to weigh the risks of terrorist acts at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory's new biodefense research lab, reiterated on Wednesday
many of the same conclusions the agency cited to avoid analyzing terrorist
threats in the first place.

"NNSA believes the probability of a successful terrorist act at the LLNL
BSL-3 Facility is very low, and it is not an event expected during the life
of the facility," the agency wrote in its latest environmental study of the
lab. "Intentional malevolent acts, such as terrorist acts, do not lend
themselves to the type of probability analysis conducted in (environmental
review) documents for accidents."

The agency's contemplation of terrorist risk is nonetheless the first time
a federal agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has evaluated terrorism
as part of legally mandated environmental studies.

Barring objections from the public, those conclusions are a step toward the
nuclear agency's finding of no significant risk from the new lab and
opening it for research aimed at better detecting and thwarting bioterror
attacks.

Appeals by critics could keep the matter of its operation before the courts
for a year or more.

"My conclusion is this document is not the serious analysis that the
community deserves and that the court ordered. This document is intended to
reassure, and it does not make me feel safer because it does not deal with
the genuine risks that come with operation of this facility," said Marylia
Kelley, head of a Livermore-based nuclear watchdog group, Tri-Valley CAREs.

In short, the agency found, terrorists are too unpredictable and are
unlikely to attack a federal nuclear-weapons lab equipped with its own
SWAT-like paramilitary force and truck-mounted machine guns. Smart
terrorists would get their germs from animals and soil, the same way that
governments built their own biological arsenals.

According to federal documents, the facility could contain as many as
25,000 different samples of germs that cause anthrax, plague, Q fever and
other diseases, for a total of as much as 100 liters.

If terrorists did attack Lawrence Livermore's biolab, the nuclear agency
concluded, the attack itself probably would destroy the germs inside with
blast, heat and exposure to ultraviolet rays in sunlight.

"Therefore, a terrorist act, such as a plane crash, would not be expected
to result in a release of greater magnitude than from other catastrophic
events already considered in this document or, for example, from releases
that routinely occur during lambing season at numerous local ranches, or
from births of other infected domestic or wild animals," the agency
concluded.

Kelley called the comparison of a suicidal plane crash into a lab full of
germ warfare specimens to the birth of an infected ewe "ludicrous."

"If what they were saying is true, you wouldn't need any safety measures
whatsoever. It's like comparing the amount of uranium you find in granite
with stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium," she said. "Sure, live anthrax
exists in nature, but obviously a terrorist would be more interested in
getting a milled biowarfare agent or an agent concentrated in solution from
a laboratory. I don't think this document is honest."

Courts typically defer to federal agencies in the evaluation of
environmental harm. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an
earlier environmental study of the lab for failing to evaluate terrorist
risk but could conclude the latest evaluation is sufficient.

"We think this does the job," said NNSA spokeswoman Lauren Martinez.

The study can be found at http://www.envirinfo.llnl.gov.

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman @angnewspapers.com.

###

Marylia Kelley,
Executive Director

Tri-Valley CAREs
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA  94551

Ph: (925) 443-7148
Fx: (925) 443-0177
Web: www.trivalleycares.org
Email: marylia at trivalleycares.org or marylia at earthlink.net