Orphan Radioactive Items Are Potential Dirty Bombs

VIENNA, Austria, June 28, 2002 (ENS) - The radioactive materials needed to build a so-called dirty bomb that spreads radioactivity upon explosion can be found in almost any country in the world, and more than 100 countries have inadequate control and monitoring programs to prevent or even detect the theft of these materials, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned this week.

"What is needed is cradle-to-grave control of powerful radioactive sources to protect them against terrorism or theft," says Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the United Nations agency that develops nuclear safety standards and protects human health and the environment against ionizing radiation.

Source capsule used in medical teletheraphy units. The gamma rays from its cobalt-60 or caesium-137 source were used to treat cancer. (Photo © Oak Ridge Associated Universities)

"One of our priorities is to assist states in creating and strengthening national regulatory infrastructures to ensure that these radioactive sources are appropriately regulated and adequately secured at all times," said ElBaradei.

The United States, Russia and the IAEA have newly established a tripartite working group on securing and managing radioactive sources in the former Soviet Union. On June 12, officials representing the three sides agreed to develop what the IAEA calls "a coordinated and proactive strategy" to locate, recover, secure and recycle orphan sources.

This agreement represents the first concerted international response to the threat posed by vulnerable radioactive sources in the region. Funding and expertise for the initiative will be provided by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Russian Federation's Ministry for Atomic Energy.

U.S. officials reported June 24 that the Bush administration expects to spend $20 million this year to safeguard dangerous radioactive materials in the former Soviet Union.

Lawyer and diplomat, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt has headed the IAEA since December 1997. (Photo courtesy IAEA)

A dirty bomb contains radioactive material, but does not use that material to produce a nuclear explosion, as nuclear weapons do.

Dirty bombs would be constructed of conventional explosives and radioactive material. Detonation would result in the dispersion of the radioactive material contained in the bomb. As with any explosion, people nearby could be killed or injured by the blast itself. The dispersed radioactive material expose people in the vicinity.

"In all likelihood," the IAEA says, "the most severe tangible impacts of a dirty bomb would be the social disruption associated with the evacuation, the subsequent cleanup of contaminated property and the associated economic costs."

ElBaradei points out that while some countries which have regulatory systems in place are urgently stepping up security measures, many countries lack the resources or the national structures to control radioactive sources.

Orphaned radioactive sources - those outside official regulatory control - are of greatest concern.

Sources used in mobile caesium irradiators in the former Soviet Union containing 3500 Curies of caesium-137. (Photo courtesy IAEA)

The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that U.S. companies have lost track of nearly 1,500 radioactive sources within the country since 1996, and more than half were never recovered.

A European Union (EU) study estimated that every year an estimated 70 sources are lost from regulatory control. A recent European Commission report estimated that about 30,000 disused sources in the EU that are held in local storage at the users' premises are at risk of being lost from regulatory control.

"The majority of these sources would not pose a significant radiological risk if used in a dirty bomb," the IAEA says.

Worldwide, the IAEA calculates there are more than 20,000 operators of significant radioactive sources: more than 10,000 radiotherapy units for medical care are in use; about 12,000 industrial sources for radiography are supplied annually.

There are about 300 irradiator facilities containing radioactive sources for industrial applications in operation - some used to irradiate food, others to sterilize items such as the U.S. mail that was suspected of anthrax contamination.

IAEA experts have recently searched out and secured orphaned sources in several countries. In Kabul, Afghanistan in late March, the IAEA was called in to secure a powerful cobalt source abandoned in a former hospital.

In Uganda a week later, the IAEA helped the government to secure a source that appeared to have been stolen for illicit resale.

During the June 2002 survey in Georgia, a team member tests a hand held radioactive detector. (Photo by Petr Pavlicek/IAEA)

"The situation in Georgia may just be an indication of the serious safety and security implications that orphaned sources may have elsewhere in the world," says Abel Gonzalez, IAEA director of radiation and waste safety.

In Georgia in 1997, a group of border frontier guards became ill and showed signs of radiation induced skin disease. Eleven were transferred to specialized hospitals in France and Germany where the cause of the exposures was found to be several abandoned caesium-37 and a cobalt-60 sources, abandoned in a former military barracks that had been under the control of the former Soviet Union.

The IAEA has been working with Georgia since 1997 to improve the safety and security of radioactive sources in this country where over 280 radioactive sources have been recovered and placed in interim storage since the mid-90s.

Trafficking in radioactive sources is of concern, and more than 70 nations have joined with the IAEA to collect and share information on trafficking incidents. The IAEA database contains 284 confirmed incidents since January 1, 1993 that involved radioactive material other than nuclear material, but the agency says "open-source information suggests that the actual number of cases is significantly larger."

Customs officials, border guards, and police forces have detected numerous attempts to smuggle and illegally sell stolen radioactive sources. If the perpetrator is willing to disregard his or her own personal safety, radioactive sources could with little effort be concealed in a truck or packed in a suitcase.

"The danger of handling powerful radioactive sources can no longer be seen as an effective deterrent, which dramatically changes previous assumptions," warns ElBaradei.

Industrial radiography source of a type used in the USA during the 1930s and 1940s to inspect welds and metal casting. (Photo © Oak Ridge Associated Universities)

In Istanbul, Turkey in 1998, two cobalt-60 sources in their shipping containers were sold as scrap metal and 10 people were exposed and had to be treated for acute radiation syndrome.

In China in 1992, a cobalt-60 source was lost and picked up by an unsuspecting individual. Three persons in the family died of resulting overexposure.

The most serious of these accidents occurred in the south-central Brazilian city of Goiânia in September of 1987. Authorities believe that scavengers dismantled a metal canister from a radiotherapy machine at an abandoned cancer clinic, rupturing the caesium-137 source. They left it in a junkyard.

Several hundred people in Goiânia were exposed to the caesium-137, but did not know it, the IAEA says. Thinking the caesium powder was "pretty," some people rubbed it over their bodies. Others inadvertently ate food that had been contaminated with the powder.

After a week, a public health worker correctly diagnosed radiation syndrome when a sufferer visited a clinic. The Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission sent in a team and they discovered that over 240 people were contaminated with caesium-137, four of whom later died.