LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Some 661 pounds of plutonium is unaccounted for and may be missing from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, an activist group says.
There is no evidence the plutonium -- enough to make dozens of nuclear bombs -- was stolen or diverted, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research said.
The Takoma Park, Md., institute said its report used documents from 1996 to 2004 to reach its conclusions, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
"The University (of California) obviously has a responsibility in this," said report co-author Arjun Makhijani. "It should be a grave embarrassment for the university to be sitting on numbers like this and discrepancies like this, and not have resolved them."
A university spokesman said the lab tracks plutonium "to a minute quantity."
The university has joined industrial partners including Bechtel National in a bid to keep its Los Alamos contract against a consortium that includes Lockheed-Martin and the University of Texas.
The activist group said it is not taking sides in the competition.
