The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board's analysis of nuclear safety problems at Los Alamos has been a staple of news coverage for a while here at the Journal. Every few months we do another story based on another problem identified by the DNFSB's tireless staff.

But the arrival in the mail today of a paper copy of the agency's annual report to Congress gave me pause. It's striking to see it all compiled into one concise package:

• while job vacancies in the nuclear safety oversight group at the National Nuclear Security Administration's  Los Alamos office have been filled, "significant challenges remain to strengthen federal oversight of nuclear safety"
• nuclear safety analyses used to operate many of the lab's nuclear facilities are out of date
• updated nuclear safety manuals and plans have been issued, but progress toward actually implementing them "is slow"
• stabilizing old stockpiles of dangerously radioactive plutonium is making progress, but "more work is needed"
• oversight of work on new nuclear projects is insufficient
• the lab is running risks by trying to continue to use the old CMR building, where plutonium analysis is done. The precise wording: "Continued operation of this facility in its current condition poses risks to workers and the public that have not been comprehensively evaluated since 1998."
• the lab is stepping up its manufacturing of plutonium pits for the U.S. nuclear stockpile without fully analyzing the implications for its nuclear safety infrastructure
• problems in the last year continued to plague efforts to get highly radioactive waste moved off site
• questions remain about the ability of the main plutonium complex at Los Alamos to confine a plutonium leak