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The Alamogordo Daily News reports:
The Sunspot Observatory is temporarily closed due to a security issue at the facility that's located 17 miles south of Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains Friday, an Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) spokeswoman Shari Lifson said.
"The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy who manages the facility is addressing a security issue at this time," Lifson said. "We have decided to vacate the facility at this time as precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facility." She said she cannot comment on the specifics of the security issue.
[...] Otero County Sheriff Benny House said the Otero County Sheriff's Office was asked to standby. "The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] is refusing to tell us what's going on," House said. "We've got people up there (at Sunspot) that requested us to standby while they evacuate it. Nobody would really elaborate on any of the circumstances as to why. The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say."
He said he has a lot of unanswered questions about what occurred at Sunspot. "But for the FBI to get involved that quick and be so secretive about it, there was a lot of stuff going on up there," House said. "There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers but nobody would tell us anything."
Why would the FBI order a sunspot research facility closed, but be unable (or unwilling) to give a reason?
Also at Popular Mechanics, Vice, and Gizmodo.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 14 2018, @11:58AM
Even post 9/11 there used to be (or still is?) a web search function for first responders etc to declare nuclear sources. My local hospital about 5 blocks away has/had all kinds of interesting stuff in the radiology / oncology department. In a sense none of this is secret much like no one can look up an individual schoolchild but knowing today is a school day you can glance at a map to see concentrations of where school children are almost certainly located (plus or minus field trips, I guess).
The closest I can find is:
https://www.nrc.gov/materials/miau/acad-toolkit.html [nrc.gov]
but thats not adequate. It would be simple to pull the safety records for first responders / EPA / MSDS type stuff for the observatory site and see whats there.
Unfortunately any hospital radiology department in the entire country or any oil well "downhole" services company on the planet or any food irradiation service has better "stuff" thats likely easier to steal. And I can't think of a physics or engineering reason to have "fun stuff" at a solar research lab. MAYBE just maybe to monitor the famous mercury bearing thingies the site has (had?) they use gamma based thickness sensors.
Also a little problem in that what little coverage has leaked indicates government agents walking around with RDF antennas; not wearing MOPP suits or similar protective gear. Although if you had people walking around in MOPP suits inside a contaminated building, great cover could be provided by walking around with wifi monitoring gear and some laptops outside the contaminated area in front of cameras. Or maybe some poor bastard walking around the site with an antenna is merely trying to provide connectivity for the agents on site and it has nothing to do with the investigation other than internal support.