Congress, Energy Dept. Confirm Loss Of Radioactive Material

The Albuquerque Journal ^ | November 10, 2003 | John Solomon

[petitfour]

WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have documented 1,300 cases of lost, stolen or abandoned radioactive material inside the United States over the past five years and have concluded there is a significant risk terrorists could cobble enough together for a dirty bomb.

[petitfour]

I don't think this is one of their subscriber access only stories because I did not have to log in.

[ccmay]

Trust me, most of this stuff is in landfills or washed down drains long ago. Much of the rest has decayed to the point of harmlessness.

Even if the terrs do manage to detonate a dirty bomb, we can deal with it. They are instruments of terror and do not pose a serious risk in the same way that nuclear detonation or smallpox do.

-ccm

[Brian S]

Trust me

Yeah and you are from the government, and "here to help"...right?

The only reason we have not been hit with another terror attack on US soil is because...it's not time!

[genefromjersey]

Interesting: When you read the whole story, it becomes clear much of it is GAO bullcrap , designed to give the Democrats something to yap about.

[LibertarianInExile]

I have to say that I have found most GAO reports pretty fair. That you want to run down the GAO here is silly. We are all about finding nukes and WMD's in Iraq now because we don't want them used elsewhere (i.e., in the U.S.). Why would we not place the same priority on the ones ALREADY in our own backyard?

Nuke plants are a security nightmare.

[ccmay]

Yeah and you are from the government, and "here to help"...right?

I'm not from the government. I have a job where I deal with radiation every day.

Besides, if I were part of some grand conspiracy as you insinuate, wouldn't I be trying to stir up fears rather than calm them? Your tin-foil is tuned to the wrong frequency.

-ccm

[genefromjersey]

The thing is, most of what they are talking about has nothing to do with power plants. It's extremely low-level stuff, used for industrial applications; or in some cases, for medical use.

There are tens of thousands of such devices out there, and it's not that surprising 1300 would be hard to account for over a 5 year period. In point of fact, most of the 1300 were accounted for.

What's left over is GAO justifying its existence, and some useful sound bytes for pols.

[mewzilla]

It's not conspiracy, it's stupidity. Something Al Qaeda is more than happy to take advantage of.