From INQ.com:

JUST IN CASE anyone was wondering where the US stores all of its radioactive materials the government has accidentally stuck a list of all the sites online and provided handy maps.

An Internet posting of a 266-page list of US nuclear sites could prove valuable if the Russians ever get around to restarting the cold war or the Chinese start thinking it might be a good idea to blow up their biggest customer.

Apparently the publication contained no classified material about nuclear weapons and all of the world's intelligence services already knew where the radioactive materials were stored anyway.

However, Energy Secretary Steven Chu admitted to the AP that the whole thing was a bit embarrassing.

A document stamped "highly confidential safeguards sensitive" for some reason unknown to anyone was posted online by the Government Printing Office. It was spotted by web geeks trolling through government documents, probably looking for references to UFOs, and published in a newsletter.

After the list was noticed, the Government Printing Office pulled the document offline straight away.

It looks as if the document might have been compiled for international nuclear inspectors. It is a list of hundreds of civilian nuclear materials storage locations, along with maps and details of the facilities. It includes sites for uranium storage, nuclear fuel fabrication plants and nuclear research facilities.

The list could make it easier for terrorist organisations looking for the raw materials to make a dirty bomb to go shopping, we guess. Publication of the list could also mean that the US will have to spend more to step up security at the sites.

One of them, a storage facility for highly enriched uranium at the Y-12 Oak Ridge complex in Tennessee, looked rather easy to get into. The US Energy Department plans to move that material into a $549 million high-security warehouse that is to be competed next year.

There's been speculation that former Bush administration political appointees who 'burrowed' into the federal civil service system during its final months might have arranged to publish the list in order to embarrass the new administration. But they wouldn't put the country at risk just to gain mere partisan political advantage, would they?