THE risk of somebody somewhere triggering a radioactive 鈥渄irty bomb鈥� is growing, evidence gathered by the UN鈥檚 International Atomic Energy Agency suggests.
The IAEA鈥檚 records, which it has released to 快猫短视频, show a dramatic rise in the level of smuggling of radiological materials, defined as radioactive sources that could be used in dirty bombs but not nuclear bombs. In 1996 there were just eight of these incidents but last year there were 51. Most cases are believed to have occurred in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. Smugglers target the radioactive materials used in factories, hospitals and research laboratories, which are not guarded as securely as those used by the nuclear industry.
Since 1993, there have been 300 confirmed cases of illicit trafficking in radiological materials, 215 of them in the past five years. And the IAEA warns that the real level of smuggling may well be significantly larger, citing reports of a further 344 instances over the past 11 years which have not been confirmed by any of the 75 states that monitor illicit trafficking.
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A dirty bomb is designed to spread radioactive material over a large area by combining radioactive material with a conventional explosive. It does not involve a nuclear explosion and would be unlikely to result in many immediate deaths, but it could provoke widespread panic and render buildings in the affected area unusable.
A terrorist attack using a dirty bomb is 鈥渁 nightmare waiting to happen鈥�, says Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who used to work at the UK鈥檚 atomic weapons plant in Aldermaston in Berkshire. 鈥淚鈥檓 amazed that it hasn鈥檛 happened already.鈥�
Preventing nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands is a huge problem. Over the past 50 years, millions of radiation sources have been used around the world for industrial, medical and research purposes. Most of them are only weakly radioactive. But according to the IAEA there are more than 10,000 sources designed for radiotherapy, each containing 1000 pellets of cobalt-60. Each pellet emits 100 gigabecquerels of radioactivity, enough to put somebody over their annual safety limit in two minutes.
There are also tens of thousands of large radiation sources used by industry as gauges, sterilisers and metal irradiators. The IAEA has expressed particular concern about the security of hundreds of thermo-generators made in Russia and the US, in which the heat produced by radioactive decay drives a generator to provide power in remote areas. Just one of them can contain as much strontium-90 as was released by the notorious Chernobyl accident in 1986.
The IAEA鈥檚 smuggling figures do not include radiation sources that have simply gone missing. An average of one a day is reported to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as lost, stolen or abandoned. The IAEA says there are still 1000 radioactive sources unaccounted for in Iraq. And of 25 sources stolen from the Krakatau steel company in Indonesia in October 2000, only three have been recovered.
In Tbilisi, Georgia, a taxi driver, Tedo Makeria, stopped by police in May 2003 was found to be carrying lead-lined boxes containing strontium-90 and caesium-137. And in Belarus customs officials have seized 26 radioactive cargoes between 1996 and 2003, six of them from Russia.
The only two known incidents that could be classed as radiological terrorism have occurred in Russia. In 1995 Chechen rebels buried a caesium-137 source in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow, and in 1998 a container of radioactive materials attached to a mine was found by a railway line near Argun in Chechnya.
One brighter spot is that there has been a fall in smuggling incidents involving plutonium and uranium, which could be used to make nuclear bombs. In 1992, 44 such incidents were recorded. By last year the figure had fallen to three, possibly because the nuclear industry has become more vigilant.
The increase in the number of confirmed incidents of theft and smuggling of radioactive material might be due, at least in part, to better monitoring. Nevertheless, powerful voices continue to warn of the threat of a dirty bomb attack. Last year Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the UK鈥檚 counter-intelligence agency MI5, said a crude attack against a major western city was 鈥渙nly a matter of time鈥�.
