Peter Nanos, Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, suspended Friday all activities there as a result of "a culmination of many things," of which the injury was only one, said laboratory spokesman Jim Fallin.

"It relates to how many security-related incidents and safety-related incidents that we've had in these past several months," Fallin told AFP in a telephone interview.

Nanos "understands the amount of pressure that the staff is under to perform perfectly, and so he decided that it's best to stop and allow everyone to take a moment to think," the spokesman said.

Los Alamos gave birth to the world's first nuclear bomb in 1945 as part of the supersecret Manhattan Project aimed at establishing America's leadership in nuclear weapons technology.

The injury that compounded the laboratory's most recent woes occurred Wednesday. The intern, 20, whose identity and academic affiliation Los Alamos refused to disclose, hurt the retina of her left eye performing an experiment with a spectraphysics laser.

"We are being told that she is not in jeopardy of losing her eyesight," the spokesman said.

But the incident came on the heels of at least two major security breaches that have jolted the renowned laboratory and raised questions about its management amid terrorism jitters.

Two classified computer storage disks, possibly containing nuclear secrets, were reported missing at the facility located in the northern part of the state of New Mexico earlier this month, and officials said they have been unable to locate them so far.

Theories ranged from innocent misplacement of the disks to nuclear technology theft. All secret work was halted at the lab on Thursday.

There was no indication how long the broader suspension would last. Officials said some divisions of the lab were likely to resume normal work in a matter of days, while others could take longer.

All the employees were expected to report to work on Monday to focus on safety and security procedures instead of their normal duties.

However, Nanos was concerned about "repeated incidents" that had made it clear to him that "people were not focusing on the task at hand," Fallin said without elaborating.

With Washington on edge over the threat of terrorist attack, the missing nuclear data has the administration of President George W. Bush seeing red -- particularly after Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry made nuclear security a campaign issue.

Without specifically mentioning Los Alamos, Kerry said Monday that "we have done too little, often too late, and even cut back our efforts" to protect nuclear materials and technology from terrorists.

Republican James Greenwood was one of several representatives at a hearing Tuesday who criticized Los Alamos and other weapons facilities.

He said they were plagued "by an ongoing pattern of business management failure and security problems."

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham reacted Thursday, ordering his top deputy, Kyle McSlarrow, and Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, to the embattled lab to oversee the inquiry.

Abraham also insisted that his earlier plan calling for all weapons design operations to be performed in a diskless environment be accelerated.

New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici called for the university that manages Los Alamos to reexamine the laboratory security procedures.

"These repeated incidences certainly do not help the University of California," he said in a statement.

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