Sister Ardeth Platte, the nun who breached the perimeter of the Y-12 National Security Site in 2010 as part of an anti-nuclear protest, died in her sleep late last week in Washington at age 84, media reported.
Platte, by the time of her death a well-known anti-nuclear-weapons protester, served time in jail for her trespassing — the first of such acts, by separate groups, that ultimately resulted in a shakeup of the physical security arrangements at Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) makes nuclear-weapons secondary stages.
Platte got four months for her unauthorized entry into federal property. She was not part of the group that slipped into Y-12 in 2012 and vandalized some federal property, although the 2012 trespassers also included nuns.
After the two incursions, then-Y-12 prime contractor B&W Y-12 fired WSI Oak Ridge: the site’s GS4-owned security subcontractor, which has since rebranded as Centerra. SOC has run physical security at Y-12 ever since and is interested in retaining the work as part of the next combined contract to manage Y-12 and the Pantex Plant. Centerra is also interested in the follow-on contract.
After the second nun infiltration in 2012, the NNSA removed Douglas Fremont from his post as security chief for the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency. However, Fremont remains in the federal service and in 2019 was appointed chief of staff for the NNSA — a post he still holds, according to the agency’s most current organization chart.
Editor’s note, 10/13/2020, 9:30 a.m. Eastern. The story was changed to include the correct name of the current physical security contractor at the NNSA sites.
