> Robert Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > From: "Gautam Mukunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > --- "Robert J. Chassell" wrote:
> > > Does anyone know more about this? If true, this > > > means that terrorists > > > in Iraq have or had relatively easy access to > > > materials for building a > > > `radiological' or `dirty' bomb. > > Everyone willing to spend a few million bucks > buying _smoke detectors_ has the capacity to build a > >dirty bomb - it is, worryingly, not all that hard. > What exactly do you mean about it being easy? > The amount of Americium in a smoke detector is quite > small. (Though > there was more in older detectors.) And acquiring > enough to make a > "practical" dirty bomb would require an ungodly > number of manual labor man hours. Why bother with smoke detectors when there's plenty of missing concentrated radioactive material around the world? I think the former USSR is the worst WRT this, but as Rob pointed out, medical sources are a relatively unrecognized source, and are quite poorly guarded in general. There's even missing fuel rods here in the USA [entire article pasted]: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=718&e=7&u=/ap/20040422/ap_on_re_us/nuclear_fuel_missing >>Vt. Nuclear Plant Looks for Missing Parts Thu Apr 22,12:43 PM ET By WILSON RING, Associated Press Writer MONTPELIER, Vt. - Engineers at a Vermont nuclear plant searched Thursday for two missing pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod while experts acknowledged they may never be found. The operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant reported the missing pieces Wednesday, saying they were not where they were supposed to be in the large pool used to store fuel rods. One of the missing pieces is about the size of a pencil. The other is about as thick but is 17 inches long. The spent fuel rods are highly radioactive and would be fatal to anyone who came in contact with them without being properly shielded, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said. Spent nuclear fuel could be used by terrorists to construct so-called dirty bombs that would spread deadly radiation with conventional explosives. "We do not think there is a threat to the public at this point. The great probability is this material is still somewhere in the pool," Sheehan said. The pieces could also have been sent years ago to a testing laboratory or a low-level nuclear waste disposal facility. The pieces were part of a fuel rod that was removed in 1979 from the Vermont Yankee reactor, which is currently shut down for refueling and maintenance. The pool where used fuel rods are stored is 40 feet deep and contains 2,789 fuel assemblies. The pencil-thin fuel rods are 12 feet long and filled with uranium pellets. Sheehan said that the missing pieces might have been cut from longer rods for testing or could have broken when they were removed from the fuel assemblies. The search for the missing pieces was going to include the use of a remote controlled camera in the pool as well as review of the documents dating back decades that cover shipments and movements of radioactive material. Sheehan cited the heightened awareness of the need to control nuclear material that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks. "We don't want this falling into the wrong hands," he said. "This is something we would never take lightly." Gov. James Douglas, after speaking Wednesday afternoon with the head of the NRC, said he was "very concerned" about the missing fuel at the plant, run by Entergy Nuclear. "This situation is intolerable," he said. In 2002 a Connecticut nuclear plant was fined $288,000 after a similar loss. That fuel was never accounted for. Vermont Yankee is located in the southeastern town of Vernon, on the state lines with Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The state's Public Safety Department and Homeland Security Unit also were notified of the missing fuel.<< Debbi who probably ought to ask somebody to show her how to make those shorter-link thingies, as others have been chastised for such awkward URLs }:-} __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash
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