Nuclear mattersHunting down dirty bomb materials
A Los Alamos-based team in in the business of locating and recovering nuclear materials from hospitals, labs, oil fields, and factories so that these materials do not fall into the hands of terrorists; between 2,500 and 3,000 radiological sources are registered each year as unwanted; some officials estimate that there may be tens of thousands of other radioactive sources that the National Nuclear Security Agency has not identified
A couple of weeks ago we wrote about the dangerous nuclear material piling up in U.S. hospitals (23 February 2009 HS Daily Wire). These materials are not always carefully registered and logged. At least someone is trying to do something about it. The Los Angeles Times’s Richard Paddock joined a Los Alamos-based team that spends its days recovering nuclear materials from hospitals, labs, oil fields, and factories — the isotopes that could one day go into a dirty bomb.
Despite collecting “more than 20,600 dangerous sources of radiation in the United States” during the last twelve years, “the agency [the National Nuclear Security Administration] is barely able to stay even.”
Between 2,500 and 3,000 radiological sources are registered each year as unwanted. Last year, the agency’s teams recovered 3,153, the largest number yet.
Last year, the Times looked at an even-hairier NNSA gig: Being part of the nuclear terror “emergency response team.”
It has a backlog of 8,800 known items. Some officials estimate that there may be tens of thousands of other radioactive sources that the agency has not identified.
