US nuclear secrets accidentally go online

WASHINGTON, USA: In a major goof-up the US government accidentally posted on Internet a document providing confidential details of US civilian nuclear sites.

The 266-page report, said to be “highly confidential”, gives detailed information about hundreds of the civilian nuclear sites and programs in the US, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons, said The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

It has triggered off a debate among nuclear experts about the danger posed by the disclosures. It also prompted a flurry of investigations in Washington into why the document had been made public, the report added.

However, the document was withdrawn from the website on Tuesday after the news was published. The US officials insisted the information detailed was not a security threat.

The report that was considered sensitive but not classified, was supposed to be handed later this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as the US yields to closer inspections of its nuclear activity.

Although the document contains no military information about US nuclear arsenals or the facilities and programs that guard the nuclear weapons stockpiles in the country, the revealed document reportedly includes many particulars about nuclear programs and facilities at Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia nuclear weapons laboratories, as well as dozens of other federal and private nuclear sites.

An attached map further illustrates the exact location of laboratories' tube vaults - cylinders embedded in concrete with a capacity of up to 44 tons of highly enriched uranium in 200 tubes each.