PREVENTING DIRTY BOMBS

Abstract

Radioactive sealed sources have a long history and a much wider worldwide distribution than do weapons-usable fissile materials. This article compares the mechanisms for controlling radioactive sources with those of weapons-usable materials and makes the case for improved policy making on the safe and secure management of radioactive sources (often referred to simply as “sources”). Such sources have been widely distributed with commercial and government support to nearly every country, yet there are no legally binding, international agreements or regulations to control any aspect of their life cycle. This is problematic because some sources that are disused, abandoned, or otherwise fall out of regulatory control could be used in the form of a radiological dispersal device (RDD, or dirty bomb). An RDD could pose significant economic and psychological impacts with the potential for detrimental effects on public health. The lack of international measures to control sources is troubling for several reasons: creating an RDD is much easier than fashioning a nuclear weapon from scratch or from stolen fissile materials; given the many incidents involving diversion from regulatory control and the misuse of sources, an RDD attack would be one of the more likely scenarios; materials security for sources is generally weak and inconsistent; it is nearly impossible to determine the total amount of sources manufactured and distributed; used sources are frequently found uncontrolled and transiting borders, and penalties are light at best; the market-based supply and demand of sources facilitates their rapid and loosely regulated distribution; and the “peaceful uses” aspect of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons along with norms that began developing around the time of Atoms for Peace have promoted the nearly unchecked global distribution of sources. Several immediate and long-term actions are suggested to reduce the threat posed by radiological sources.

Keywords:

• Radioactive sources
• radiological weapons
• fissile materials
• International Atomic Energy Agency
• Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
• terrorism
• materials security

Notes

1. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama,” Prague, April 5, 2009, <www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered/>.

2. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “Sealed Source Disposal and National Security—Problem Statement and Solution Set: Deliverable (Part 1) of the Removal and Disposition of Disused Sources Focus Group of the Radioisotopes Subcouncil of the Nuclear Government and Sector Coordinating Councils,” December 9, 2009.

3. United Nations, Tenth Report of the Executive Chairman of the Special Commission Established by the Secretary General Pursuant to Paragraph 9(b)(i) of Security Council Resolution 687 (1991) and Paragraph 3 of Resolution 699 (1991) on the Activities of the Special Commission, S/1995/1038, part VII, December 17, 1995.

4. Graham Allison, “Nuclear Terrorism: How Serious a Threat to Russia?” Russia in Global Affairs, September/October 2004, reprinted in English by Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, <belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/660/nuclear_terrorism.html>.

5. Lee Michael Katz, “Some Still Doubt Nuclear Terror Threat, Former U.S. Envoy Says,” Global Security Newswire, April 9, 2010, <gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20100409_5302.php>.

6. Jane Harman and Susan Collins, “Al Qaeda Still Wants a Dirty Bomb: Despite an Active Threat, the White House Has Slashed Funding for Radiological Protection,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2010, <online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704201604575373270385490484.html>.

7. “Lawmakers Lambaste ‘Dirty Bomb’ Security Funding Cuts,” Global Security Newswire, July 22, 2010, <www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/siteservices/print_friendly.php?ID=nw_20100722_2382>.

8. Matthew Bunn, Securing the Bomb: Securing All Nuclear Materials in Four Years (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University/Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2010), < www.nti.org/e_research/Securing_The_Bomb_2010.pdf>.

9. In January 2003, British officials discovered Al Qaeda training manuals on detonating a dirty bomb along with actual radioisotopes necessary for this at a nuclear laboratory in Herat, Afghanistan. Abu Zubaydah, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, made statements in 2002 that Al Qaeda already had this capability. In 2005, a significant amount of cesium was stolen from an oil company in La Gloria, Colombia. The material is still missing, and Al Qaeda was suspected of conducting the operation. “Stolen Cesium Still Missing,” El Pais, November 22, 2005.

10. All Al Qaeda–origin attacks after September 11, 2001 have used conventional explosives, including the following notable incidents: December 2001, Richard Reid's shoe bomb attempt on American Airlines Flight 63; July 2005, suicide bombings on three subways and a bus in London using conventional explosives, killing fifty-two people; September 2009, Najibullah Zazi's attempted use of explosives in New York City subways; December 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the so-called Christmas Day bombing attempt; and May 2010, Faisal Shahzad's attempt to ignite various explosives in a Times Square car bomb. Any of these cases could have been supplemented with some form of radiological material and would have been difficult to detect and prevent and—from a threat and consequence perspective—would have been more complicated to mitigate.

11. One example is a recent seizure by Interpol and Pretoria police in South Africa of Cs-137 from a criminal organization trying to sell the material for use in an RDD. The fact that this seizure involved only a sample of the cesium from an unknown larger device is even more disturbing.

12. Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, “Mandate of the Commission,” undated, <www.wmdcommission.org/sida.asp?ID=11>; World Institute of Nuclear Security, “About WINS: Vision and Mission,” undated, <www.wins.org/content.aspx?id=2>.

13. An RDD is a device or mechanism that is intended to spread radioactive material from the detonation of conventional explosives or other means. RDDs are considered weapons of mass disruption; few deaths would occur because of the radioactive nature of the event, but significant negative social and economic impacts could result from public panic, decontamination costs, and denial of access to infrastructure and property for extended periods of time. An RED is a device having the purpose of exposing people to radiation, rather than dispersing radioactive material into the air. An improvised nuclear device is a crude nuclear weapon that uses either HEU for a gun-type device (two pieces of HEU being shot at each other as a projectile through a barrel) or plutonium for an implosion-type device (equal pressure on a sphere of fissile material from a low-density subcritical state to a high-density critical state).

14. High-activity sources are IAEA Category 1 and 2 sources. Category 1 sources are those that if mismanaged with short-term exposure give an acute dose resulting in death or permanent injury; Category 2 sources have the same effect but require longer-term exposure.

15. For the purposes of this article, weapons-usable materials are uranium with a concentration of greater than 90 percent uranium-235 (HEU) and plutonium with more than 90 percent of plutonium-239.

16. Generally, deterministic effects are acute short-term exposures resulting in death or permanent injury, and stochastic effects are chronic short- or long-term exposures resulting in long-term health issues, such as an increased risk of cancer.

17. United Nations, Yearbook of the United Nations 1980 (New York: UN Publications, 1980), vol. 33.

18. Yunhua Zou, scholar on Chinese security matters, personal interview with the author, March 3, 2010.

19. Yunhua Zou, scholar on Chinese security matters, personal interview with the author, March 3, 2010.

20. Exceptions are Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea; however, their stockpiles total far less than those declared by the nuclear weapon states. International Panel on Fissile Materials, Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament (Princeton: International Panel on Fissile Materials, 2009), pp. 7–16.

21. Global Fissile Material Report 2009, p. 16. The NPT defines a nuclear weapon state as a state that manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon before 1967; the official NPT nuclear weapon states are the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France. The remaining states fall under non-nuclear weapon state status, with the exception of Israel, India, and Pakistan that never signed, and North Korea that withdrew its membership from the NPT.

22. For example, although a linear accelerator is an excellent alternative to radiological sources used for teletherapy, it is expensive to obtain and operate and difficult to train staff on and maintain these complex devices. The NRC Event Notification Reports demonstrate that losses of control and accidents of sources are not uncommon events and therefore are also a significant issue for developed states as well.

23. Joel Lubenau, ed., “Security Risks of Radioactive Material,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies Report, May 27, 2003.

24. Committee on Radiation Source Use and Replacement, National Research Council, Radiation Source Use and Replacement (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2008).

25. Committee on Radiation Source Use and Replacement, National Research Council, Radiation Source Use and Replacement (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2008).

26. Charles D. Ferguson, Tahseen Kazi, and Judith Perera, “Commercial Radioactive Sources: Surveying the Security Risks,” Occasional Paper No. 11, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2003.

27. Michael Levi, On Nuclear Terrorism (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 224.

28. DHS, “Sealed Source Disposal and National Security—Problem Statement and Solution Set”; Barbara Reichmuth et al., “Economic Consequences of a Rad/Nuc Attack: Cleanup Standards Significantly Affect Cost,” Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, PNNL-SA-45256, April 2005; Tom Cousins and Barbara Reichmuth, “Preliminary Analysis of the Economic Impact of Selected RDD Events in Canada,” presentation at the CRTI Summer Symposium 2007, CRTI 05-0043RD, Gatineau, Quebec, June 11–14, 2007.

29. Ferguson, Kazi, and Perera, “Commercial Radioactive Sources.”

30. The NRC's “Event Notification Reports” are updated daily, <www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2010/>. Nearly every day, at least one source falls out of regulatory control.

31. Charles Streeper, Marcie Lombardi, and Lee Cantrell, “Nefarious Uses of Radioactive Materials,” in Proceedings of the 48 ^th Annual Institute of Nuclear Management Meeting (Madison: Omnipress, 2008), based on a presentation at Institute of Nuclear Management Meeting, July 13–17, 2008, Session D Nonproliferation & Arms Control: Global Threat Reduction Initiative—Protect II.

32. Hamid Mohtadi and Antu Murshid, “A Global Chronology of Incidents of Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Attacks: 1950–2005,” National Center for Food Protection and Defense, July 7, 2006; Lyudmila Zaitseva and Kevin Hand, “Nuclear Smuggling Chains: Suppliers, Intermediaries, and End-Users,” American Behavioral Scientist 46 (February 2003); E.E. Gogin et al., “A Case of an Attempt on the Life of an Individual by the Use of a Gamma Irradiator,” Terapevticheskii Arkhiv 66 (1994), pp. 89–91; NRC, “Two Individuals Charged with Conspiracy to Commit Murder Involving Radioactive Material (Radium),” U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Preliminary Notice of Event or Unusual Occurrence, PNO-I-96-043, June 14, 1996.

33. Hans M. Kristensen and Alicia Godsberg, “Chechnya Special Weapons,” Federation of American Scientists, April 12, 2010, <www.fas.org/nuke/guide/chechnya/index.html>.

34. Robert William Johnston, “Database of Radiological Incidents and Related Events,” March 29, 2010, <www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/index.html>.

35. Teletherapy heads generally start with 5,000–6,000 curies of activity, so it is important to note that this is an example of sources that had decayed well beyond their useful half-lives yet still had a pronounced impact on society.

36. Lubenau, “Security Risks of Radioactive Material.”

37. “Radiation Response Team Recovers All Cobalt-60 Source from Mayapuri,” Times of India, August 3, 2010, <timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Radiation-response-team-recovers-cobalt-source-from-Mayapuri/articleshow/5892612.cms>.

38. IAEA, “IAEA Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB): IAEA Information System on Illicit Trafficking and Unauthorized Activities Involving Nuclear and Radioactive Materials,” ITDB Fact Sheet, September 2009.

39. DHS, “Sealed Source Disposal and National Security,” p. 13.

40. The 1997 Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (INFCIRC 546) briefly mentions member-states ensuring proper disposal, safety, and the repatriation of sources to manufacturers that can manage disused sources, which are very few.

41. The Tripartite Initiative was cooperation between Russia, the United States, and the IAEA to recover high-activity sources in the former Soviet Union.

42. Global Fissile Material Report 2009, p. 4.

43. Lubenau, “Security Risks of Radioactive Material.”

44. Cristina Hansell, “Full-Scale Exercise Mocking up Non-Nuclear State Verification of Nuclear Warhead Dismantlement Held,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, July 21, 2009, <cns.miis.edu/stories/090721_dismantlement_exercise.htm>.

45. Abel Gonzalez, “A Historical Perspective and Recent Developments,” in W. Duncan Wood and Derek M. Robinson, eds., International Approaches to Securing Radioactive Sources Against Terrorism (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2008), p. 15.

46. IAEA, “International Basic Safety Standards for Protection against Ionizing Radiation and for the Safety of Radiation Sources,” Safety Series No. 115, 1996.

47. Milestone 1 is meant to set up a framework that requires the establishment of legislation and regulations, a regulatory authority, system of notification, authorization, control, and inventory of sources and facilities. IAEA, “The Model Project,” 2001, August 4, 2010 <www-ns.iaea.org/projects/modelproject/>.

48. A.M. Cetto, Proceedings of an International Conference: Security of Radioactive Sources (Vienna: IAEA, 2003), p. 219; K. Mrabit, “Proceedings of an International Conference: Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources: Towards a Global System for the Continuous Control of Sources Through Their Life Cycle,” Bordeaux, France, June 27– July 1, 2005, p. 173.

49. IAEA, “The Radiological Accident in Goiânia,” STI/Pub/815, 1988.

50. IAEA, “Nature and Magnitude of the Problem of Spent Radiation Sources,” IAEA TecDoc-620, 1991.

51. IAEA, “International Basic Safety Standards for Protection against Ionizing Radiation and for the Safety of Radiation Sources.”

52. The IAEA has several different types of Safety Series publications that are organized from more general Safety Fundamentals (general concepts) to Safety Practices (detailed methodologies for applying Safety Standards and Guides). Safety Standards are basic requirements for specific activities that must be in place for safe practices. Safety Guides are recommendations based on international experience that are related to fulfilling basic requirements.

53. The conference was sponsored by the IAEA, European Commission, Interpol, the World Customs Organization, and the French Atomic Energy Commission.

54. Gonzalez, “A Historical Perspective and Recent Developments,” p. 17.

55. “IAEA Board of Governors Approves IAEA Action Plan to Combat Nuclear Terrorism,” IAEA Press Release, March 19, 2002, <www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2002/prn0204.shtml>.

56. IAEA, “Categorization of Radioactive Sources,” IAEA-TecDoc-1344, July 2003. IAEA-TecDoc-1191 (“Categorization of Radiation Sources”) was originally published at the end of 2000, but it had limitations and was later thoroughly revised to TecDoc-1344.

57. For the first time, the title of the conference suggested international management of sources, “International Conference on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources: Towards a Global System for the Continuous Control over Sources Throughout Their Lifecycle.”

58. Gonzalez, “A Historical Perspective and Recent Developments,” p. 23.

59. IAEA, Ad Hoc Meeting of States that are Major Suppliers of Radioactive Sources, Vienna, May 2010.

60. Steven McIntosh, “Technical Meeting on Implementation of the Code on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources with Regards to Long Term Strategies for the Management of Sealed Sources,” Report of the Chairman, IAEA International Centre, July 1, 2009.

61. U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954, Sec. 53 and 54. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 has two other sections (63 and 64) that specifically promote source distribution, with the only limitations on issuing a license being Sec. 123 (which outlined limits on cooperation with other nations), the quantity, and cost of the source. Sec. 64 stipulates that the quantity limit for sharing source material with another country is 3 metric tons per year per recipient—an enormous amount of any source material.

62. Lee Leonard et al., “Plutonium-239/Beryllium Neutron Sealed Sources: Origins, Inventory, and Suitability for Disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant,” LA-UR-04-4289, Los Alamos National Laboratory, June 1, 2004.

63. Lee Leonard et al., “Plutonium-239/Beryllium Neutron Sealed Sources: Origins, Inventory, and Suitability for Disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant,” LA-UR-04-4289, Los Alamos National Laboratory, June 1, 2004.

64. McIntosh, “Technical Meeting on Implementation of the Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources with Regard to Long Term Strategies for the Management of Sealed Sources.”

65. World Institute for Nuclear Security, “Enhancing the Security of High-Activity Radioactive Sources: Workshop Report,” Vienna, June 2010. The workshop was the first of its kind for this newly formed organization; its success demonstrates the need for an international solution. A follow-up workshop is scheduled for 2011 or earlier.

66. IAEA, “Nuclear Security, Including Measures to Protect against Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism,” GC(53)/RES/11, September 2009.

67. John Miller, “The Role of a Supplier in the Safe and Secure Management of Disused Radioactive Sealed Sources,” presentation at Waste Management 2010, Phoenix, March 9, 2010.