CANADA:Nuclear Thefts Raise Security Fears

Record nuclear thefts raise fears about security failures

Ottawa Citizen

Published: Thursday, November 22, 2007

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 four-fold increase in nuclear smuggling since 2006, a further indication that 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, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), 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 2005.

The commission suggests better reporting by businesses and institutions that use the devices is responsible for the higher number of incidents this year. It also suspects the primary target of theft is not the device, but, for example, vehicles such as pickup trucks used to transport nuclear gauges for measuring ground moisture and density.

That was the case recently in Montreal when a vehicle belonging to concrete testing company and containing a portable gauge was stolen from a parking lot in front of the company garage. Days later, the vehicle was in a traffic accident and the gauge was recovered undamaged.

All of the materials stolen or missing this year are in IAEA radioactive source categories 4 and 5, the lowest risk for potential harm to human health. (An industrial gauge lost from a mill in 2006 was in higher risk IAEA category 3 material.)

But that is only partially reassuring, says Wesley Wark, an expert on intelligence and security issues at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies.

"All that means is that they themselves pose no threat; it is not proof that the system of controls is really working the way it should. CNSC needs to beef up its enforcement measures with industry and really get the message out that there is zero tolerance for losses of radiation devices."

In 2006, the CNSC became the first nuclear regulator in the world to update its national registry and implement a sealed source tracking system, which thousands of businesses and institutions are required to report to on the status of their CNSC-licensed nuclear devices. The ultimate responsibility for the devices rests with the licensees.

The commission deserves credit for its inventory tracking efforts, says Mr. Wark. But "if the overall idea is to enforce strict control of radiation devices of all sorts, the strict control is not working to plan and there seems to be some slippage with regard to the lower risk items. Such slippage needs to be stopped to ensure that the system as a whole is working properly."

Richard Hoskins, an IAEA nuclear trafficking expert, voiced a similar concern this week over the recorded 1,266 incidents of nuclear smuggling around the globe since 1993, including about 18 cases involving highly enriched uranium or plutonium.

"It shows that materials are not under proper control and potentially available for malicious use," he told the Bloomberg news agency.

The Vienna-based IAEA attributes much of the rise in smuggling incidents to more countries reporting cases to United Nations authorities. Interpol, the world police organization, has identified 175 people since November 2005 who have tried to obtain nuclear material illegally and the organization suspects terrorists may try to use a dirty bomb to disrupt western financial markets.

A 2005 disaster planning paper by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security considered a scenario in which three dirty bombs went off in nearby cities. At each site, it estimated 180 fatalities, 270 injuries and up to 20,000 people contaminated. The economic impact could be "up to billions of dollars."

Last week, Nigel Lightfoot, chief adviser to the head of Britain's Health Protection Agency, said the polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko last year tested Britain's response to a radiation emergency and made clear the country would need international help to deal with a dirty bomb attack.

"No country is going to be able to cope by itself," he told the Reuters news agency. "It's become clear to most of us internationally....that we'd all have to work together and help each other."