Sprol

The world’s largest single nuclear weapons storage facility is a huge underground bunker in New Mexico. Because of a backlog of warheads awaiting dismantlement at the one U.S. facility that is equipped to load and unload nuclear warheads the safe way, Pantex, there are more nuclear weapons stored underground here than any other single place in the world.

Of the 15 states that host nuclear weapons, New Mexico ranks number one by virtue of the many warheads stored at the Kirtland Underground Munitions Storage Complex (KUMSC), a modern $43 million, 300,000-square-foot facility opened in 1992. Special military aircraft land at the Albuquerque International Airport and load and unload nuclear weapons at the “Hot Cargo Pad.” Warheads are taken to the KUMSC and stored in one of 58 storage bays/underground bunkers. The facility has state-of-the-art security.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Extensive micro processor based security system for 490,000 square foot Underground Munitions Storage Facility and 18,000 square foot Squadron Operations Building.
The electronic security system provided an integrated capacity for the automatic access and circulation control of personnel entering the buildings including detection and warning of attempts to penetrate the facility.

Automated access control consisted of card reader/keyboard access, personal identity verifier devices, security cards, turnstiles, x-ray machines, personnel entry entrapment booths, metal detectors, radiation detectors for vehicles and personnel.
Detection sensors include portal status sensors, interior volummetric sensors, ultrasonic sensors, passive infrared sensors and photoelectric sensors.
Ludvik Electric

During the past decade, Kirtland has housed one of the highest concentrations of nuclear warheads in the nation at the depot, according to the Washington, D.C.,-based environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. Estimates for the number of warheads there have varied from 2,000 to nearly 3,000 over the past five years, according to the group.

Robert S. Norris, a nuclear weapons expert with the environmental group, said in an interview that Kirtland is probably holding about 2,000 warheads now. Norris also called Kirtland’s depot “among the more highly secure ones in the United States … or in the world.”

“Nevertheless, I suppose there is always room for improvement,” Norris said.
Source, Global Security
Security Upgrade newsblip

Special tractor-trailers transport warheads across Interstate 40 to and from the Pantex Plant outside of Amarillo, Texas. As the primary custody transfer point from the Energy Department to the Defense Department for warheads going from Pantex to the field, and from Defense to Energy for warheads going from the field to Pantex, Kirtland occupies (and has occupied since the 1940s) a special place in nuclear logistics.

The 898th Munitions Squadron is a selectively manned unit supporting the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense , the Air Force, Army and Navy, and Theater Commanders. 898 MUNS operates the Kirtland Underground Munitions Maintenance Storage Complex (KUMMSC), the Air Force’s only underground weapons maintenance and storage facility.

The 898th stores, maintains, modifies and ships weapons and components to combat or storage organizations within the Air Force, sister services, and Department of Energy; and provides support to presidential drawdown and dismantlement programs.
Kirtland Air Force Base

If Albuquerque were to secede from the union, it would immediately become our planet’s third largest nuclear power. Certainly this, paired with the location of Sandia National Laboratories in close proximity to the world’s largest nuclear weapons depot near the runways of the Sunport, paints a huge bull’s eye over Albuquerque for anyone who is angry with our country.

An explosion caused by an accident, attack or plane crash at the Kirtland Underground Munitions Storage and Maintenance Complex could disperse the uranium and plutonium contained in the nuclear warheads there. As a result, Albuquerque had the honor of hosting the first federal dirty bomb drill in 2002.
Albuquerque Journal

No emergency plan can adequately prepare for a disaster involving the large amount of uranium and plutonium in the 2,510 nuclear warheads. The city’s current draft of the Albuquerque Emergency Operations Plan does a very poor job of this. The main method listed of rapidly alerting the public is the Emergency Broadcast System.
Albuquerque Journal

You can also view and download full size images for this story and slideshow.

Primary source for the number of warheads is this report from the Brookings Institution.