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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has thrown a cloak of secrecy over assessments of the safety and security of its nuclear weapons operations, a part of the military with a history of periodic inspection failures and bouts of low morale. Overall results of routine inspections at nuclear weapons bases, such as a "pass-fail" grade, had previously been publicly available. They are now off-limits. The change goes beyond the standard practice of withholding detailed information on the inspections. The stated reason for the change is to prevent adversaries from learning too much about U.S. nuclear weapons vulnerabilities. Navy Capt. Greg Hicks,...

It's not over. It's never over. After last week's deadly airport and subway bombings in Brussels, the Belgian government remains on high alert for jihad attacks and espionage at its nuclear facilities. One Belgian nuke plant security guard was murdered recently and his ID is missing. Two of the Brussels bombers reportedly spied on the home of a top senior scientist in the country's nuclear program. ISIS has been implicated in an alleged insider plot to obtain radioisotopes from one of Belgium's nuclear plants for a dirty bomb. Two former Belgian nuke plant workers left their jobs to fight for...

… The White House says the leaders of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden will meet with Obama at the White House on May 13. The summit will include talks on environmental initiatives, nuclear security and countering violent extremism. …

A U.S. supercomputer has won back the crown in the never-ending battle for the world's most powerful supercomputer. Its victory is the latest milestone marking the steady climb of computing power all across the globe. The Top500 industry list gave its No. 1 ranking to the Sequoia supercomputer housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California — a spot earned by Sequoia's ability to crunch 16.32 quadrillion calculations per second (16.32 petaflops/s). Such supercomputing power is used by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration to simulate nuclear weapons tests for older weapons that have been sitting in the U.S. arsenal....

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and presidents, prime ministers and other top officials from 47 countries start work Monday on a battle plan to keep nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands. Confronting what he calls the "single biggest threat to U.S. security," Obama is looking for global help in his goal of ensuring all nuclear materials worldwide are secured from theft or diversion within four years. On the eve of what would be the largest assembly of world leaders hosted by an American president since 1945 — the San Francisco conference to found the United Nations — Obama said nuclear...

WASHINGTON: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who arrived in Washington on Sunday afternoon to attend a two-day nuclear summit, launched Pakistan’s campaign for international acceptance as a responsible nuclear state soon after his arrival.

The Department of Homeland Security has spent $230 million to develop better technology for detecting smuggled nuclear bombs but has had to stop deploying the new machines because the United States has run out of a crucial raw material, experts say.

OAK RIDGE — A federal inspection found that Oak Ridge guards routinely worked excessive overtime and, in some instances, received less training than recommended for high-security nuclear installations. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General released the report today. The IG reviewed the Oak Ridge training program because of an allegation that a security police officer had received credit for training never received. The report said that allegation was confirmed and that an inspection turned up a number of other shortcomings. However, Wackenhut Services Inc., the government’s Oak Ridge security contractor, hotly disputed the IG findings. "We train...

Nuclear security under scrutiny By Gordon Corera BBC security correspondent Not all former Soviet nuclear sites have been fully secured The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, is holding a meeting on Wednesday to look at the security of nuclear arms and material.The London meeting comes amid growing fears that stockpiles have not been sufficiently protected from terrorists. The end of the Cold War left the former USSR with around 30,000 nuclear weapons and the material to build 80,000 more. But less than 50% of this has been fully secured - through reprocessing, better protection, or destruction....

Director accused of overreacting A Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist charged Friday that "national security has suffered demonstrably" and the nuclear weapons lab's reputation has been unjustly maligned because of director George "Pete" Nanos' decision in July to suspend work at the lab while cracking down on safety problems. The physicist, 32-year lab veteran Brad Lee Holian, has submitted a 1,500- word article outlining his charges to the journal Physics Today. The article has not yet been accepted for publication. Holian works in the T-12 division of the University of California-run lab in New Mexico. Contrary to Nanos' harsh public...

PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- A trucking company accidentally sent a shipment of diluted weapons-grade uranium to a North Carolina nuclear plant instead of its intended destination in Kentucky, but the mix-up posed no risk to anyone, officials said. The federal government is investigating how six metric tons of blended Russian uranium went to a nuclear fabrication plant in Wilmington, N.C., instead of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Transport Logistics International sent the load on Dec. 19 _ along with a similarly numbered load from a dock in Norfolk, Va. _ to Global Nuclear Fuel LLC in Wilmington, N.C. Rod Fisk,...

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) - Two or three times each week, a convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with drums of mined uranium heads south from the Sahara Desert in Niger on a 10-day journey to the port of Cotonou in neighbouring Benin. Two lightly armed Nigerien gendarmes accompany the tarp-covered trucks on their 1,995-kilometre trip. They have no satellite phones or other ways to communicate in case of trouble. On their prearranged stops for the night the drivers must notify the mining companies, but they take no special precautions to secure the drums against theft. This low-grade security for the powder...

Drinking and drug abuse make the danger of accidents and theft at nuclear facilities a severe problem, activists and sociologists said Monday. Citing what they called a crisis situation in the nuclear industry, members of Greenpeace and other groups urged the government to improve safety and security at existing sites instead of building more nuclear reactors. President Vladimir Putin stressed the importance of the nuclear sector for defense and power needs in January, and the Nuclear Power Ministry said two years ago that it wanted to build 20 new reactors by 2020 and double reliance on nuclear power -- which...