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A battle between intellectual advancement and national security concerns in Northern California may result in significant changes in the research capabilities of one University of California-managed laboratory.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the primary nuclear weapons labs in the United States, has been criticized recently for its perceived vulnerability to terrorist attacks and has been urged to move its store of plutonium and highly enriched uranium to a more secure location.

The lab has resisted this measure because the removal of the nuclear material would hinder its research efforts. Livermore officials maintain that the lab’s security, which is constantly reevaluated, is adequate to combat potential terrorist threats.

“Security has never been better than it is right now,” said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the Energy Department, which oversees research labs across the country, including Livermore.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the lab has instituted a number of security upgrades. But a report released Tuesday by the General Accounting Office, the investigative wing of Congress, admonished the lab and four others for their lingering vulnerabilities.

The report also cited the labs’ proposed time frames to update their security procedures as unrealistic.

Concern has arisen over the prospect of a terrorist group infiltrating the labs and constructing and detonating a makeshift nuclear device within minutes.

The Design Basis Threat is a program instituted by the labs that will require them to be able to defend against a “larger attacking force” by 2006. The GAO report said the labs will likely not be ready by then.

“They (the GAO) don’t think we can meet our own standards that we laid out for ourselves but that’s absolutely not true,” Wilkes said.

“Sept. 11 changed a lot of things and since Sept. 11, we have been doing a lot of things to improve security at all of our sites,” he said.

The security concerns surrounding Livermore, located about 45 miles southeast of San Francisco, are derived largely from the lab’s vicinity to residential communities.

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on National Security on Tuesday, Danielle Brian, executive director of independent watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight, said the lab “will not be able to comply with the new directives” and poses a serious threat to its neighboring communities.

“The encroaching residential community surrounding Lawrence Livermore has made it nearly impossible to properly protect the weapons quantities of plutonium and highly enriched uranium stored there,” Brian said.

Brian recommended the nuclear materials at Livermore be moved to the Energy Department’s Nevada Test Site.

Moving the materials will make them more secure, but researchers at Livermore question whether this outweighs the benefits of their research.

“If all the nuclear securities in the United States were in one area, it would make security much easier,” said David Schwoegler, a spokesman for Livermore.

“You have to strike a balance between what’s in the best interest of national security from a research standpoint and what’s in the best interest of national security from a materials protection standpoint,” he said.

A large portion of the research done at Livermore is environmentally friendly, Schwoegler said, as it study methods to dismantle, immobilize and store nuclear weapons that create as little nuclear waste as possible.