OTTAWA -- A record number of low-level radioactive materials, the kind terrorists could fashion into dirty bombs, have gone missing in Canada this year, raising concerns about the effectiveness of federal controls over nuclear materials.
News of the jump in thefts and lost material coincides with an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Europe at which nuclear counter-terrorism specialists were told this week of an almost fourfold increase in nuclear smuggling since 2006, a further indication al-Qaeda-inspired radicals may be trying to obtain radioactive material for a bomb.
Highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the essential ingredients for a nuclear bomb, remain obvious concerns. But officials are also worried about nuclear material in millions of radioactive sources, typically in measuring and analytical equipment used in medicine, industry, agriculture and research, that could be extracted and spewed into the air using conventional high explosives. The primary intent would be to panic a population rather than inflict mass causalities.
As of Wednesday, 26 radioactive sources have been reported lost and stolen so far this year in Canada, compared to 15 last year and a dozen in 2005 and previous recent years, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the federal nuclear regulator. Fourteen devices this year remain missing, twice as many as last year when six were not recovered and almost three times the five still missing from 20
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http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=7b29113c-86ab-4a83-9638-808af19d0584&k=84784
Thank you Oorang.
I’ll add that to my link list.