Dirty Bombs

waltky · Jan 8, 2013

Hunting for dirty bombs...

Taking to the air on hunt for dirty bomb threats
January 7th, 2013 - Residents of Washington may be surprised by a helicopter flying low overhead this week, endlessly prowling the city to map its radiation signature.

The helicopter is crisscrossing the city, like a lawn mower covering a lawn, flying as low as just 150 feet off the ground. CNN spotted it northwest of downtown on Monday, flying low over the buildings, back and forth, east to west. The purpose: to produce a baseline scan of the natural radiological readings in the capital. Once the map is done, any new anomalies - or suspicious radioactive activity - could be more easily detected.

If authorities ever need to find stolen radioactive material in the capital or a dirty bomb, they would want to be able to separate out any new spikes in the radioactivity readings. "If sometime in the future you have a reason to be looking for something radiological, it's very necessary to have the original background so you don't chase a high-radiation area that's part of the background," said Joseph Krol of the National Nuclear Safety Administration, which is conducting the work. "If there was some type of threat," he said, "we would do the aerial survey first." Then, officers with sensors would go on foot to the location where an anomaly was found. A team could be deployed anywhere in the country within two hours, he said. "The way we operate," he said, "we assume every time we get a call, that this is the big one."

The scan of the District of Columbia will cover 70 square miles and take about two weeks to complete. But if authorities were urgently trying to find nuclear material, Krol said, "we would hope that scanning the entire city would not be necessary. You always have other indicators, like intelligence, that narrows down the search area." A dirty bomb - a bomb with no atomic explosion, but spewing enough radioactive material to require evacuations and quarantines - is a method of attack that terrorists would be highly interested in, according to Randy Larsen with the Institute for Homeland Security. "The good news is, it wouldn't kill a lot of people," he said. "But if you did it here in downtown Washington D.C., or Wall Street in New York City, and the people can't go back in that area for a long time, that's a pretty significant event."

But could a hidden dirty bomb be detected from a helicopter? "Absolutely," said Larsen, but only after a detailed scan has been done. "This would tend to make something stick out like a sore thumb. Without it, it would be looking for a needle in a haystack." Two pilots, a scientist, a technician and equipment for detecting gamma radiation are aboard the flights. Everyday radiation can come from several common urban sources, including industrial sites, construction sites, hospitals that use radiological materials, and even the stone used in buildings and monuments.

The agency has already scanned the capital once before, as well as New York, Baltimore, and San Francisco. Larsen said the New York scan turned up unexpected sources of radiation - industrial accidents that were never been reported. "They were surprised how many hot spots they found," he said. The helicopter in Washington is making an exception for the National Zoo, giving it a wider berth to avoid scaring the animals. But Krol said the public should not be worried about the survey's potential impact on people. "These scanners are passive," he said. "All they're doing is measuring the emanations coming from the ground."

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/07/radiation-scanning-helicopter-surveys-washington/
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Indofred · Jan 8, 2013

Yes, you have to watch out for Israel because they have a track record for stealing plutonium from the US of A.

waltky · Dec 5, 2013

Update: Radioactive Materials Found In Mexico...

Mexico finds stolen radioactive material amid dirty bomb fear
Thu Dec 5, 2013 - Mexican police have found dangerous radioactive medical material stolen by thieves that the United Nations said could provide an ingredient for a "dirty bomb," the country's national nuclear safety commission CNSNS said on Wednesday.

The truck was found on Wednesday close to where it was stolen outside Mexico City. The thieves removed the radioactive material from a protective case, exposing them to dangerous levels of radiation then dumped it less than a mile away. The truck was stolen on Monday while it was taking cobalt-60 from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste-storage center, Mexican officials and the UN agency said earlier. "Both the container and the radioactive source have been located," said Mardonio Jimenez Rojas, an official at the commission, told Reuters. "The radioactive source was removed from its container and was found a kilometer away." "The thieves were exposed to radiation," he added, saying those exposed to the material could die. Experts were working on how to secure the radioactive material in a protective container, he said.

The vehicle was seized when the driver stopped at a gas station in the town of Temascalapa, 35 km (22 miles) northeast of Mexico City. Truck hijacking is common in Mexico and the theft occurred in the State of Mexico, which is not a drug cartel stronghold. "Our suspicion is that they had no idea what they had stolen. This is a area where robberies are common," Fernando Hidalgo, spokesman for the Hidalgo state prosecutor, said earlier. Mexico's national nuclear safety commission published photographs of the cargo as it was being prepared for shipment, showing a reinforced case containing the medical device, which holds the radioactive material and which looks like part of a car axle. The box is marked with the hospital's name and "radioactive materials."

Apart from peaceful medical and industrial applications, experts say, cobalt-60 can also be used in a dirty bomb in which conventional explosives disperse radiation from a radioactive source. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has stepped up calls on member states to tighten security to prevent nuclear and radioactive materials from falling into the wrong hands, made no mention of any such risk in its statement on Wednesday.

The IAEA also did not give details on how much radioactive material was in the vehicle when it was seized. Inside a teletherapy device, cobalt-60 is used to treat cancer. "At the time the truck was stolen, the (radioactive) source was properly shielded. However, the source could be extremely dangerous to a person if removed from the shielding, or if it was damaged," the IAEA said in a statement. Cobalt-60, the most common radioactive isotope of the metal, has many applications in industry and in radiotherapy in hospitals. It is also used for industrial radiography to detect structural flaws in metal parts, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA said exposure to gamma radiation from cobalt-60 results in an increased risk of cancer.

DIRTY BOMB COULD CAUSE 'MASS PANIC'
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See also:

Stolen cobalt-60 found in Mexico; curious thieves likely doomed
Thursday, December 5,`13 — The carjackers who set off international alarm bells by absconding with a truckload of highly radioactive material most likely had no idea what they were stealing and will probably die soon from exposure, Mexican authorities said at the end of a brief national scare.

The prospect that material that could be used in a radioactive dirty bomb had gone missing sparked an urgent two-day hunt that concluded when the material, cobalt-60, used in hospital radiotherapy machines, was found Wednesday afternoon along with the stolen Volkswagen truck. Mexican officials said no public health risk remained. The robbery occurred as the cobalt-60 was being driven from a public hospital in the border town of Tijuana to a storage facility in central Mexico. The driver and his assistant worked for a licensed private company and the lethal radioactive substance was sealed in the back.

The cargo truck, equipped with a crane, was nearing its destination in the darkness early Tuesday, several hours before the storage facility opened. While waiting for daybreak at a gas station in the state of Hidalgo, north of Mexico City, the drivers were jumped by two gunmen who beat them and stole the truck, said Mardonio Jimenez, a physicist and high-ranking official with Mexico’s nuclear safety commission.

This image released Dec. 4, 2013, by the National Commission on Nuclear Safety and Safeguards of Mexico's energy secretary shows a piece of machinery that is part of the cargo of a stolen truck hauling medical equipment with extremely dangerous radioactive material, in Tepojaco, Hidalgo state, north of Mexico City. The cargo truck was stolen from a gas station in central Mexico.

With lethal radioactive material on the loose, Mexican authorities put out a lookout across six states. The International Atomic Energy Agency warned that the material “could be extremely dangerous to a person if removed” from its casing. “I believe, definitely, that the thieves did not know what they had, they were interested in the crane, in the vehicle,” Jimenez said.

The cobalt-60 was found, removed from its casing, in a rural area near the town of Hueypoxtla about 25 miles from where the truck was stolen. Jimenez suspected that curiosity got the better of the thieves and they opened the box. So far the carjackers have not been arrested, but authorities expect they will not live long. “The people who handled it will have severe problems with radiation,” he said. “They will, without a doubt, die.”

Source
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Mushroom · Dec 9, 2013

Indofred said: ↑

Yes, you have to watch out for Israel because they have a track record for stealing plutonium from the US of A.
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Fact check fail.

http://iranaffairs.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/israel_stole_uranium.jpg

As far as I have been able to find, there have never been any kind of evidence that Israel stole Plutonium (which is a weapons grade fissile material). However, they are suspected of stealing around 200 tons of uranium ore.

Which is a common industrial element, used in everything from X-ray machines and aircraft ballast to dyes and glazes for teeth and pottery.

So can you provide any kind of reliable evidence to back up that claim?

Indofred · Dec 9, 2013

Mushroom said: ↑

Fact check fail.
Click to expand...

http://iranaffairs.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/israel_stole_uranium.jpg

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/may/13/israels-bomb/

Which brings me to three curious omissions in Cohen’s book—the 1968 smuggling past Euratom inspectors of two hundred tons of uranium ore to Israel, the CIA’s conclusion at about the same time that Israel previously stole bomb-grade uranium from a US naval fuel plant, and the 1979 Vela satellite signal that was widely interpreted as an indication of an Israeli nuclear test. The book’s complete silence on these important events is especially odd as they have been discussed extensively elsewhere.
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Mushroom · Dec 9, 2013

Indofred said: ↑

http://iranaffairs.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/israel_stole_uranium.jpg

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/may/13/israels-bomb/
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Uranium Ore is not "bomb grade uranium". No more then Gold Ore is the same as gold ingots.

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Dirty Bombs

waltky Well-Known Member

Indofred Banned at Members Request

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