Department of Energy (DOE) Transports and Loses Small Amount of Plutonium

Amount of plutonium transported and lost similar to this small 

plastic disk amount

“Dirty Bomb” materials lost or stolen (maybe / maybe not) … that story is here from The Center for Public Integrity – details follow (my emphasis included):

Two security experts from the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio, TX in March 2017 with a sensitive mission: “To retrieve dangerous nuclear materials from a nonprofit research lab there.”

(Simple enough job, um? Okay, then task two simple-minded morons…!!!)

According to documents and interviews, their job 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 two specialists from Idaho brought radiation detectors and small samples of dangerous materials to calibrate them: Specifically, a plastic-covered small disk of plutonium (picture similar to above shot), 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.

Then 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 don’t know where the plutonium – one of the most valuable and dangerous substances on earth – is. Nor has the cesium been recovered.

No public announcement of the March 21 incident has been made by either the San Antonio police or by the FBI, which the police consulted by telephone. When asked, officials at the lab and in San Antonio declined to say exactly how much plutonium and cesium were missing. 

But Idaho lab spokeswoman Sarah Neumann said the plutonium in particular wasn’t enough to be fashioned into a nuclear bomb.

(Whew, that’s encouraging, right – I guess?)

It is nonetheless now part of a much larger amount of plutonium that over the years has gone quietly missing from stockpiles owned by the U.S. military, often without any public notice.

Unlike civilian stocks, which are closely monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and openly regulated – with reports of thefts or disappearances sent to an international agency in Vienna — the handling of military stocks tended by the DOE is much less transparent.

The DOE declined comment for this story and they don’t talk about instances of lost and stolen nuclear material produced for the military, and they have also been less willing than the NRC to punish its contractors when they lose track of such material, several incidents suggest.

(Ergo: That nontransparent approach doesn’t match the government’s rhetoric.)

Protecting bomb-usable materials, like the plutonium that went missing in San Antonio, “Is an overriding national priority,” – that in the words of former President Obama’s press office said in a fact sheet distributed during the fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit that he hosted in late March 2016 – a Washington event attended by more than 50 heads of state.

The administration boasted in the declaration that America’s security standards for military-grade materials “meet or exceed the recommendations for civilian nuclear materials” made by the Vienna-based International AEA. It also touted the strength of its tracking of such materials, which it said would “ensure timely detection and investigation of anomalies, and deter insider theft/diversion.”

The United States also boasted about its transparency, explaining that it “has published studies and reviews of nuclear security incidents, including lessons learned and corrective actions taken.”

Current President Donald Trump, speaking to a military audience at Fort Myer in Arlington, VA on August 21, 2017, parroted the Obama administration’s refrain that “we must prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists and being used against us, or anywhere in the world for that matter.” 

Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), released in February, similarly emphasized the threat posed by nuclear terrorism, and asserted that “preventing the illicit acquisition of a nuclear weapon, nuclear materials, or related technology and expertise by a violent extremist organization is a significant U.S. national security priority.”

But America’s record of safeguarding such materials isn’t sterling. Gaps between the amount of plutonium that nuclear weapons companies have produced and the amount that the government can actually locate occur frequently enough for officials to have created an acronym for it – MUF, meaning “Material Unaccounted For.”

(More like SNAFU – popular in many circles from the old military days you can figure out what that means – I already know (Hint: Situation Normal All F**ked Up – that’ll  save you some time (smile.)

My 2 cents: So I wonder whose grubby hands are holding that small amount of it – that is enough to possibly make a small dirty bomb – if they can’t, I bet they can find a buyer without much effort. 

I also bet the FBI and others are over the “Dark Web” with that in mind.

Thanks for stopping by.