A 267-page draft declaration of U.S. nuclear facilities to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency International Atomic Energy Agency was accidentally posted on-line Monday by the US Government Printing Office. As part of U.S. obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a declaration of must be made of the programs and locations of facilities that store enriched uranium and other materials used in nuclear weapons.
According to a story in the Washington Post, the information was removed after about a day. However, there is a fear that the information in the draft declaration, which includes "maps of facilities showing the locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons at those facilities", according to the WSJ, could be valuable to terrorists or others.
US officials called the disclosure a "mistake" but also that it posed "grave concern."
Robert N. Charette is a Contributing Editor to IEEE Spectrum and an acknowledged international authority on information technology and systems risk management. A self-described “risk ecologist,” he is interested in the intersections of business, political, technological, and societal risks. Charette is an award-winning author of multiple books and numerous articles on the subjects of risk management, project and program management, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A Life Senior Member of the IEEE, Charette was a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award in 2008.
