Chances are you didn't pay much attention to a story in last week's edition of the Albuquerque Journal regarding the Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the Manhattan Project in the Second World War. It revealed that after 20 years and $350 million, scientists at the vast 40 sq mile atom bomb factory in the New Mexico desert finally plugged in and switched on a brain-meltingly complex new X-ray machine known as the dual-axis radiographic hydrotest facility (DARHT, for short). Instead of doing what it was supposed to - scanthe vast stockpile of nuclear warheads at Los Alamos to see if any of them need repairing - the contraption somehow X-rayed itself, causing part of it to blow up.

I mention this because Los Alamos, operated by a consortium that includes the University of California, has been much on my mind lately, largely because of the suicide of the bioweapons specialist Bruce Ivins, accused of masterminding the terrifying anthrax attacks of 2001. Before the attacks, Ivins had been treated with antipsychotic medication and had confessed to a colleague in an e-mail: “I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away.” Yes, that's right: one of the chief scientists in a programme designed to kill millions using a weaponised disease was as mad as a box of frogs. Yet no one - including his shrink, or the colleague in which he confided - seemed to think that was much of a biggie.

Which brings me back to Los Alamos. When DARHT self-destructed last week it was the latest in a astonishing series of bungles at the place that brought us the A-bombs Fat Man and Little Boy.

Indeed, according to a report published by the US Government this year, in the past five years there have been 37 security breaches at Los Alamos of so-called “IMI-1” status, defined as “events that pose the most serious threats to US national security... or could result in deaths in the workforce or general public”. Examples have included the creation of a new container of nuclear material that was never documented, meaning it “could have been diverted without any record showing that it had ever existed”, not to mention allegations of espionage and fraud — the latter including a lab employee buying a Ford Mustang using the facility’s credit card.

The scariest breach was discovered by chance when police conducted a drugs bust at a nearby trailer park and found a USB drive containing 228 pages of top-secret data, which allegedly included instructions on how to unlock the kind of warhead that used to be aimed at Moscow. Turned out the data had been half-inched by a junior archivist who simply wanted to catch up on work at home rather than sell the secrets to the Chinese or teach America a lesson by nuking Wisconsin. Yet if security doesn't improve at Los Alamos, it'll surely only be a matter of time before another Bruce Ivins ends up with his finger on the biggest and reddest button in the entire US arsenal.

It's enough to make you paranoid.

Doc, I've a problem

From what I can gather, safety standards at Los Alamos aren't much better than the security standards. According to the US Government's report on the laboratory, recent workplace accidents have included a package containing plutonium-238 rupturing and contaminating two workers; a worker being partially blinded after being hit by a laser (imagine describing that to the receptionist at your doctor's office - “so I was hit by this laser out in the desert at this top-secret nuclear facility”); two workers accidentally walking thorugh a neutron radiation field (tricky to explain too, I imagine); another two workers accidentally inhaling acid; and a worker contaminating himself at work then spreading the radiation to his home and the homes of his relatives - along with few other places - before finally realising something was wrong 11 days later. I suppose there's one upside to all of this: if Homer Simpson ever loses his job at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, he'll at least have somewhere to go.

Badge of honour

Speaking of job losses, I fear Los Angeles is having a hard time coming to terms with the new post-crunch economy. I was driving through Hollywood the other day and pulled up behind an incredibly handsome-looking sports coupé whose badge declared it to be a Hyundai. After a couple of red lights spent admiring the vehicle's powerful rump and twin exhuasts, I made a resolution to find a Hyundai dealership the very next day and inquire about the exact same model.

There was only one problem: when I overtook, I realised it wasn't a bloody Hyundai at all. It was a brand-new $200,000 Bentley Continental GT, the owner of which had ripped off all the official badges and replaced them with Hyundai ones, presumably in an effort to diffuse the envy of other motorists. If this is LA's idea of slumming it during a recession, I heartily approve.

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