Free Republic

There have been cases of people stealing radioactive material without knowing about it, and an IAEA spokeswoman said that may have been the case with the stolen truck in Mexico. Mexican authorities are searching for the stolen truck.

Photo released by Mexican authorities shows the radiotherapy device, containing radioactive material, being loaded for transport before it was stolen.A truck carrying "extremely dangerous" radioactive material was found Wednesday close to the place where it was stolen in Mexico, authorities said. The cargo was found about half a mile from the container. The vehicle was transporting radiotherapy equipment containing the radioactive isotope cobalt-60 from a hospital to a waste storage center, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. "At the time the truck was stolen, the source was properly shielded," the IAEA said in a statement. "However, the source could be...

National Security: The theft of a truck carrying dangerous radioactive material combined with terrorist group activity in the hemisphere shows that the need for a secure border involves more than illegal immigration. Mexican authorities said Wednesday they found the stolen truck and likely recovered all of the radioactive cobalt taken by a group of thieves who were probably after the truck, unaware it carried a deadly cargo. Cobalt-60, which is used in radiation therapy to treat cancer, was being transported from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center. But what if the thieves...

In the early 1980s, a Taiwan steel company accidentally mixed some highly radioactive cobalt-60 into a batch of steel rebar. The radioactive rods were then used in the construction of 1,700 apartments. As a result, people living in these buildings were subject to radiation up to 30 times the normal amount received from the natural background. When dismayed officials discovered this enormous error 15 years later, they surveyed past and present apartment dwellers expecting to find an epidemic of cancer. Normal incidence would have predicted 160 cancers among the 10,000 residents. To their astonishment, the researchers discovered only five cases...

While the White House was engaged in hosting a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington D.C., a major nuclear incident occurred in India that escaped the attention of the international press. Five people suffering from serious radiological burns were hospitalized in West New Delhi this week from contact with nuclear material in a Delhi scrap market. The material has been identified as Cobalt-60 which may be used for making a dirty bomb. Indian police sectioned off the 200 market stores in the thickly populated city of 14 million and sealed nearby establishments within a one-kilometer radius. Scrap dealer Deepak Jain and...

Agency says radioactive materials recovered in home of man allegedly slain by his wife ...BELFAST, Maine — James G. Cummings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a “dirty bomb.” According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings’ home after his shooting death on Dec. 9 It says that four 1-gallon...