Posted on 07/16/2018 1:21:39 PM PDT by Red Badger
Two security experts from the Department of Energys Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017 with a sensitive mission: to retrieve dangerous nuclear materials from a nonprofit research lab there.
Their task was to ensure that the radioactive materials did not fall into the wrong hands on the way back to Idaho, where the government maintains a stockpile of nuclear explosive materials for the military and others.
To ensure they got the right items, the specialists from Idaho brought radiation detectors and small samples of dangerous materials to calibrate them: specifically, a plastic-covered disk of plutonium, a material that can be used to fuel nuclear weapons, and another of cesium, a highly radioactive isotope that could potentially be used in a so-called dirty radioactive bomb.
But when they stopped at a Marriott hotel just off Highway 410, in a high-crime neighborhood filled with temp agencies and ranch homes, they left those sensors on the back seat of their rented Ford Expedition. When they awoke the next morning, the window had been smashed and the special valises holding these sensors and nuclear materials had vanished.
More than a year later, state and federal officials dont know where the plutonium one of the most valuable and dangerous substances on earth is. Nor has the cesium been recovered.
(Excerpt) Read more at idahostatesman.com ...
(Facepalm)...You had ONE job....
Misleading. Had to read deep down to find out they only lost their source check samples.
They will find it when the perps are found fried. I can hope, can’t I?
This probably is not a big danger since these calibrating samples were probably emitters of very low levels of radiation. It would appear to me that you would want to be able to pick up the slightest of radioactive particulars so there would be no need for more powerful emitters.
Of course my Nuclear Engineering license was revoked last year.
Nothing gets past the Freepiest of the Freepers.
The next day a flashy silver car going just over 80 mph on the local interstate, up and disappeared.
All that was found was a California license plate still spinning...
Plutonium used to be regularly used in certain consumer and medical products back in the 60s and 70s.
Reminds me of the time I left a doomsday device in the back of my pickup.
Never did find out where that went.
There are laws and regulations that subjects must follow for the safe handling of radioactive materials. Seems tha they don’t apply to apparatchiks.
This guy has it?................
Real genius. High crime area, so they leave valises, clearly visible, in the back seat of the car, overnight. Heaven forbid they exert themselves and carry them inside the hotel. Brilliant. I’ll bet they were shocked to find the car had been broken into. Probably got a promotion.
Hopefully they misspelled PU and meant polonium.
My old Geiger counters had a check sample taped to the side!.............
The “security experts” don’t deserve the title.
Were the irresponsible bum federal “workers” fired? Probably, they got some sort of bonus.
Well, they learned a lot about security that night...................
Radioactive or not, plutonium is also a deadly poison.
Well, they didn’t profile the neighborhood where they stayed.
They didn’t stay in a Holiday Inn Express, either..............
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