Americum for sale

That this is still possible is frightening and shameful (I doubt things are any better in Canada):

Undercover congressional investigators posing as West Virginia businessmen obtained a license with almost no scrutiny from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that enabled them to buy enough radioactive material from U.S. suppliers to build a "dirty bomb," a new government report says.

The investigators obtained the license within 28 days from officials at the NRC, the federal agency that in addition to regulating nuclear power plants oversees radioactive materials used in health care and industry, the report by the Government Accountability Office says. NRC officials approved the request with a minimal background check that included no face-to-face interview or visit to the purported company to ensure it existed and complied with safety rules, the report says.

Using a post-office box at Mail Boxes Etc., a telephone and a fax machine, the undercover investigators from the GAO obtained the license "without ever leaving their desks," the report says.

After counterfeiting copies of the license, the GAO undercover agents ordered portable moisture density gauges, which contain radioactive americium-241 and cesium-137 and are commonly used at construction sites to analyze the properties of soil, water and pavement. The investigators ordered 45 gauges -- enough to build a bomb with enough radioactive material to qualify as a level-3 threat on the International Atomic Energy Agency's scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the most hazardous.

The GAO investigators never took possession of the radioactive material, in part because they lacked the means to handle it safely. But the report notes that, armed with an arsenal of phony licenses, they could have secured contracts to buy much more than they did -- enabling them to make an even more lethal bomb...

Mark C.

Update: Best comment. Ever.

Posted by markc at July 13, 2007 04:46 PM