WASHINGTON, July 17 (AFP) - A leading US nuclear weapons laboratory ground to a halt this weekend following major security breaches and an injury to an intern during an experiment, an official said Saturday.
Peter Nanos, Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, suspended Friday all activities there as a result of "a culmination of many things," of which the injury was only one element, said laboratory spokesman Jim Fallin.
All secret work at Los Alamos was halted Thursday after classified data went missing.
In the 1940s, Los Alamos gave birth to the first nuclear bomb as part of the Manhattan Project.
"It relates to how many security-related incidents and safety-related incidents that we've had in these past several months," Fallin told AFP in a telephone interview.
Nanos "understands the amount of pressure that the staff is under to perform perfectly, and so he decided that it's best to stop and allow everyone to take a moment to think," the spokesman said.
The injury that compounded the laboratory's most recent woes occurred Wednesday. The intern, 20, whose identity and academic affiliation the laboratory refused to disclose, injured her left eye performing an experiment with a spectraphysics laser.
The woman, who had suffered a lesion on her retina and had been treated locally, was to be flown to Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, for further medical treatment, according to Fallin.
"We are being told that she is not in jeopardy of losing her eyesight," the spokesman said.
The incident came on the heels of at least two security breaches that have jolted the renowned laboratory and raised questions about its management in the jittery post-September 11 security environment.
Two classified computer storage discs, possibly containing nuclear secrets, were reported missing at the supersecret facility located in the northern part of the state of New Mexico earlier this month, and officials say they have been unable to locate them so far.
There is no indication how long the suspension will last. Officials said some divisions of the lab were likely to resume normal work in a matter of days, while others could take longer.
All the employees were expected to report to work on Monday, but they will be asked to focus on safety and security procedures instead of their normal duties, the officials pointed out.
They also made clear that the missing computer discs and the injury were just some of the snafus that have shaken the lab.
Nanos was concerned about "repeated incidents" that had made it clear to him that "people were not focusing on the task at hand," Fallin said. He declined to elaborate.
With Washington already on edge over the constant threat of a new terrorist attack, the missing nuclear weapons data has the administration of President George W. Bush seeing red.
On Thursday, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ordered his top deputy, Kyle McSlarrow, and Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, to Los Alamos to oversee the inquiry into the security breach.
"The investigation to date indicates widespread disregard of security procedures by laboratory employees," Abraham snapped in a statement. "This is absolutely unacceptable."