Disruptions caused by last year's security flap at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory may have cost as much as $367 million because activities were shifted away from the lab's normal work, members of Congress were told yesterday.
Lab officials halted work at the facility last July after reports that two classified computer disks had disappeared. An investigation later determined they never existed. Some of the normal activities did not resume until last month.
 
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The laboratory also disclosed yesterday that the mystery about the disks might have been resolved quickly last summer if two employees had not falsified an inventory sheet showing that the disks existed.
Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Peter Nanos said the inventory sheet was signed even though no inventory had been taken. The two employees were fired, but when pressed at a House hearing about whether they should be criminally prosecuted, Nanos said that was not for him to decide.
During the "stand-down" at the lab in New Mexico, thousands of employees were told to stop their normal work and join the search for the disks, undergo security training, and undertake other safety- and security-related activities.
Many of the workers returned to their normal duties after a month.
Linton Brooks, the Energy Department's undersecretary for nuclear security, told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on investigations yesterday that the $367 million figure is an "upper-limit" estimate of how much the security-related suspension may have cost the lab in lost or delayed activities.
The laboratory disagrees, putting the figure at $119 million. The Energy Department's estimate includes tens of millions of dollars in indirect costs that should not be attributed specifically to the work stoppage, Nanos said.
