Bogus Company Obtains Nuclear License

i_like_spam writes "As reported in the NY Times, undercover investigators from the Government Accountability Office set up a bogus company and received a license to purchase dirty-bomb nuclear materials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The GAO's investigation shows that the security measures put in place after 911 are not sufficient for protecting the American people." From the article: "Given that terrorists have expressed an interest in obtaining nuclear material, the Congress and the American people expect licensing programs for these materials to be secure, said Gregory D. Kutz, an investigator at the accountability office, in testimony prepared for the hearing."

Comments

The GAO Application

[Anonymous Coward]

Section One: Information
Name: Fakey McNukesTheWhales
Organization: The Organization Against Liberal Rags (TOALR)
Use (check all that apply):

• X Academic
• X Business
• _ Terrorism

Intended goals (from above use):

• X Making Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• _ Energy
• _ College Prank
• _ Covertly refining yellow cake uranium with a heated gas filled centrifuge spinning at the speed of sound so that the isotope U235 separates from the heavier U238 therefore making the core of the dirty bomb powerful enough to strike down the heathen George W. Bush and all American citizens--PRAISE ALLAH!

Section Two: Behavioral
Question One: You are walking down the street and you see a box of puppies. Do you

1. _ Take the puppies home and sell them for profit.
2. X Hug the puppies and love them until you can find their owner.
3. _ Curb stomp the puppies

Question Two: You are approached by a man claiming to be from Nigeria offering you nuclear warheads with green, white & red striped flags on them. Do you

1. X Ask the man for his name and inform the NRC of his proposition.
2. _ Buy his warheads and forget he ever said anything about his nationality.
3. _ Curb stomp the man

Question Three: You enter a voting booth on election day but don't know any of the candidates. Do you

1. _ Vote Democrat.
2. X Vote Republican.
3. _ You're too busy to vote.

--
For Internal Office Use Only:
X Approved _ Rejected

See, they only answered one question wrong (the correct answer for Question Two in Section Two was the third option), the system works!

Re:The GAO Application

[Anonymous Coward]

Intended goals (from above use):
* _ College Prank The funniest college pranks are the ones that end with "Dude! You've got cancer!"

Re:The GAO Application

[Gregb05]

Actually, the correct answer for that question was a write in:
"Train them as hunting dogs"

Re:The GAO Application

[itsdapead]

Actually those immigration forms foreigners have to fill out upon entering the US are not that far off from your questionaire.

Actually, I used to find those "Are you an evil kitten-huffing war-criminal terrorist? yes/no (If yes, please bribe your local embassy official before travelling)" stupid until I got the point:

Kitten huffing and other unamerican practices may or may not be against federal or state law - and attempting to arrest or deport someone for it could run into trouble from pinko liberal hippy lawyers muttering obscenities like "probable cause", "jurisdiction" or "it was all done in Photoshop". However, supplying false information on an immigration form is - praise the lord - very illegal and they can arrest you like mad for that.

Re:The GAO Application

[donscarletti]

Covertly refining yellow cake uranium with a heated gas filled centrifuge spinning at the speed of sound so that the isotope U235 separates from the heavier U238 therefore making the core of the dirty bomb

Actually, if you refined the uranium it wouldn't likely be a "dirty bomb" but would be actually the better known A-Bomb (well, after rearranging the insides a bit). The reason for the dirty bomb panic is that they use raw, unrefined fissile material, making them easier for terrorists to theoretically obtain. The problem with dirty bombs however is that the aformentioned raw, unrefined fissile material isn't overly dangerous unless in huge quantities. This is since it's too old and stable for many of the freaky-dangerous isotopes to exist since they have tiny half lives. Only the fallout from a REAL nuclear blast or some very fresh waste from a poorly designed reactor is potent enough to be dangerous in the thin spread you get from explosive dispersal. I guess enrichment, with its higher u235 count would be more effective, though U235 does not have the same zing as some of the crazy stuff you could get if you just made it reach critical mass.

Re:The GAO Application

[FunkyELF]

Wow, did you mean to post that as an anonymous coward?
I wouldn't be showing off my knowledge of dirty bombs (if I had such knowledge) (which I don't) (...nor will I ever) (I love America).

Re:The GAO Application

[stonecypher]

Chances are if he says the bomb is made out of marshmallows and pixie dust, the NSA won't go after him; since that's about as accurate as the explanation he gave, I'm willing to bet that he's in the clear.

Law not sufficient

[schabot]

The GAO's investigation shows that the security measures put in place after 911 are not sufficient for protecting the American people.

When are people going to get this. The laws existing before (insert grand public hysteria event here) were sufficient. There is a difference between needing to increase the strength of the laws, thereby weakening civil liberties, and properly and thoroughly enforcing the laws which are already in place.

Re:Law not sufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading the article I can tell you that the GAO guys are blowing this way out of proportion. The amount of Americium and Cesium that would be obtained in one of the moisture density devices is so small that you would need THOUSANDS, maybe hundreds of thousands of them to make any kind of 'dirty bomb'. The amount of Americium in one analyzer is about the size of a pin head, barely visible to the human eye. This is the same Americium that is in normal smoke detectors all around the country, in every home in every state. Millions of people have them, maybe we should all panic that terrorists will invade our homes and make dirty bombs out of our smoke detectors??

The reality of it is that I can take Americium and hold it in my hands. It's an alpha emission radioactive isotope, meaning the first layer of dead skin on my hands would be enough to block the radioactivity.

This is a scare article, designed to make the Bush administration look incompetent.

They forgot to mention that actually making the bomb EXPLODE would involve an entire process that would probably have sent off flags from other governmental agencies. They don't mention it because they were never going to build a bomb, and besides it looks 'scary' that the Nuclear Regulatory Committee allowed the license to potential terrorists rather than the Department of Agriculture allowing the purchase of a ton of fertilizer.

Why don't they publish an article on how you are being RADIATED every time you fly in an airplane? Or how about every time you go to the airport, you get NUKED by the metal detector!! Oh my we should ban all RADIATION it's going to be made into DIRTY BOMBS by terrorists and the Bush/Republicans/White Male Americans who are complicit since they caused 9/11!!!!!!eleven1!12!

Please...

Re:Law not sufficient

[Notquitecajun]

Somewhat true. I actually think that existing laws may have been TOO cumbersome for effective law enforcement, ie the lack of ability for communication between the CIA and domestic law enforcement. The problem with DHS is that it tries to do the job that COULD be done with effective communication between the FBI, CIA, NSA, and military.

Re:Law not sufficient

[tomhudson]

" The idea with the terrorist dirty bomb would not be to get it to explode it would be to wrap the radioactive material around a conventional explosive get around helicopter height in a city with skyscapers and then explode it. The material would be embedded in the walls of the building or shatter glass and be enbedded in the floors and interior walls of the building; and possibly people.

Then based on the anthrax attacks it would require that the building be destroied. It would be the perfect terrorist attack, fiarly easiy to do provided you have the materials, and huge amount of destruction.

Screw the nuclear crap. Just hose the building in dioxin or ricin. There's a reason why biologicals have been called "The Poor Man's Nuke."

Or you could use [REDACTED] along with [REDACTED] and really cause a panic. Just [REDACTED], and make sure you [REDACTED]; then just dump [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] or [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] near any convenient [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] - and run like hell.

Hold on, there's some suits from the [REDACTED] who want to talk with me ...

Re:Law not sufficient

[networkBoy]

metal detectors don't nuke you.

as to the americium, did you hear of the boy scout that made a working breeder reactor largly from old smoke detectors and coleman lantern mantles?
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html
-nB

Re:Law not sufficient

[stonecypher]

The amount of Americium and Cesium that would be obtained in one of the moisture density devices is so small that you would need THOUSANDS, maybe hundreds of thousands of them to make any kind of 'dirty bomb'.

This would only be true under the relatively unlikely situation that the terrorists were trying to make the bomb entirely out of the salting material, which they aren't. The salt doesn't need to be in much presence; nuclear explosions do a pretty good job of vaporizing and dispersing elements.

The amount of Americium in one analyzer is about the size of a pin head, barely visible to the human eye.

And way, way more than enough to salt a bomb. By the way, maybe you should try reading the article: "But he said the danger associated with the amount of radioactive material the auditors were trying to buy should not be overstated." In fact, the people demonstrating the flaw in control are just as aware that the test they made isn't a nuclear threat as you, some random SlashDot goon, are. That's not actually the point. That said, if you'd bother to check your math, the amount of Americum required is about three quarters of the volume of alpha emitter that was released in the Goiania accident, and the Goiania accident was just two guys carrying around one tiny container of dust. Turns out that a nuclear weapon does a better job of dispersing material than do two excited dudes who don't know why it's bad that their stuff glows in the dark.

By the by, that accident contaminated 250 people, and that's in a weird little rural village with a population of less than nothing. If you just move that to two dudes walking around New York City with an object like that, you're looking at probably several thousand deaths. If you took that capsule and put it on top of a relatively high roof (say, an apartment building or a hotel,) then set up a simple oscillating desktop fan, you're looking at more deaths than any terrorist attack in US history (maybe in global history, not really sure.)

That amount of alpha emitters nice and charged/distributed by a thermonuclear explosion? Yeah, you're just wrong about thinking that's not terrifying.

The point is that the NRC is supposed to investigate everyone. Nobody should have been able to get anything, no matter how innocuous. The purpose of the exercise wasn't to attempt to acquire a dangerous level of material, but simply to show that virtually no effort was required to circumvent these regulations. Amusingly, the reason this worked is almost certainly because there was someone like you at the helm, making nasty comments about how harmless the materials are, and deciding to save themselves some time and just pass the damn thing.

The reality of it is that I can take Americium and hold it in my hands.

Yep. Cobalt too. That really doesn't have much to do with the danger involved. Many extremely dangerous things can be held in your hands, including C4 and U238. I'd ask what your point was, but I think you were just trying to pretend that fissile alpha emitters aren't dangerous because one of the situations that doesn't poison you to death is being in contact with the material.

Or did you think the bomb salts were about something other than chemical toxicity?

But he said the danger associated with the amount of radioactive material the auditors were trying to buy should not be overstated.

Well, if they took the time to powder the Americum first, they could just use a traditional chemical explosive to distribute it. Timothy McVeigh managed. Turns out that normal bombs aren't that hard to make. Sure, that wouldn't matter much with Americum, but Americum has the exact same okay process as the other materials the NRC stores, including thorium and polonium. Get those as powders in a traditional bomb, and you've got a several mile cloud of you're-dead-in-three-days.

It turns out that the peo

blue zig AYB.

[eneville]

"Oh no, someone has set us up the bomb!"

Dirty Bomb?

[fatphil]

Does anyone actually still believe that myth?

It's just another piece of government propaganda to keep the population scared.

One of the reading rooms of the university library (previously a chemistry lab) was way more dangerous - both mercury and asbestos. I bet near any highway in the average metropolis there's way more carcinogenic shit in the air than from any mythical 'dirty bomb'.

Re:Dirty Bomb?

[otacon]

Apparently someone doesn't watch 24, there are atleast 2 to 10 terrorist attack attempts every hour, and we are always only seconds away from stopping them. Yes, some of them are dirty bombs. Maybe someone should educate themselves before posting...

received a license to purchase...

[niceone]

received a license to purchase dirty-bomb nuclear materials

I'd kind of expect that just filling in the "Dirty-bomb materials licence form" would lead to instant arrest.

Terrorism

[pubjames]

I don't think this administration is worried about terrorism at all. Terrorism is just a useful justification for what they do, and keeping the people scared.

The thing that really convinced me of this was how they handled the Iraq war. Leaving aside for a moment that bombing the crap out of people is probably a pretty good way to make new terrorists, they did the following:

1) Failed to secure nuclear facilities in Iraq. (They did however make a big effort to secure the oil wells).
2) Distributed in Iraq, without care or record, twelve billions dollars of Iraqs money in cash.

Are those the actions of an administration that is worried about terrorism? To me, they are the actions of an administration that wants to create them...

Is that all?

[MichaelSmith]

TFA:

The machines include americium-241 and cesium-137

I had access to cesium-137 at college. There wasn't any real security about it. You could probably rip it off it you wanted to. I personally have a cache of americium-241 on a shelf in my garage. Thats where I put old, non-functional smoke detectors. I don't actually know where I can go to get rid of them and I am not stupid enough to put them in the bin so they stay in the garage.

You can't make a nuclear bomb out of these materials. You can certainly make a dirty bomb which will spread the stuff around, but I don't know how bad that is really going to be. It might release radioactivity embarrassingly close to background with any decent coverage.

medical and waste from other countries

[circletimessquare]

doesn't matter if they plug this particular loophole. there a few others: radioactive waste and medical equipment. doesn't have to be from this country, ship it in in a lead lined cargo container. oh, we inspect all of those, right?

take a white van, pack it with TNT and strontium-90 from radiotherapy equipment or nuclear waste/ nuclear plant parts and set it off in times square. doesn't have to cause a lot of damage. the real "bomb" is the psychological and economic bomb: no one will want to go to midtown manhattan anymore

after the explosion which would kill a half dozen people and shatter some windows (nothing, right?), you'd have reporters walking around with geiger counters, and talking about the half-life of strontium-90 (28 years). 5.5 years after 9/11, we are still talking about the air quality issue of the particles of concrete and steel and diesel fuel and aluminum and asbestos. that's all washed away by now. but radioactive contamination doesn't work that way. it sticks around for decades

in other words, you can kill a bunch of people. ok, they are gone, done for. case closed. people grieve, people move on. psychologically, it's cut and dry. but you can do another kind of bomb, something more sinister and insidious: you can damage a society more by introducing a permanent nagging environmental degradation in the form of low level radiation. this is far more damaging economically and psychologically. it's scandalous, it's a permanent nag in your head, not something you get over. and that's the whole point of terrorism: the instilling of terror. terrorists can't kill us all, but they can influence our thinking. to paraphrase stalin ("a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"): the endless fretting over a nonquantifiable and continuous degradation to your health for years is perhaps more terrorizing than outright killing someone

that's why a dirty bomb is so nasty a concept, and why we should worry about it

Re:medical and waste from other countries

[i.r.id10t]

*snip* the real "bomb" is the psychological and economic bomb *snip*

QFT. The insane long lines, the stupid restrictions, etc. involved with air travel these days simply indicate that the terrorists have won. They no longer need to actually attack to distrup the lives of hundreds of thousands, the mere mention of the possibility of an attack or even a new attack vector is enough...

Nooooo!

[toQDuj]

>not sufficient for protecting the American people.

Nooooo! Poor widdle Americans! Awwww. *Hugs Americans*

B.

you don't get it

[circletimessquare]

fear isn't a neocon invention. setting off a dirty bomb doesn't have to kill a lot of people. in fact, if a dirty bomb killed one person, it would be more terrifying than a regular bomb that killed 1,000 people. a regular bomb: the dead people are gone. it's over. history. you can grive and put it behind you. but a dirty bomb causes a permanent nagging psychological degradation for decades, a permanent worry about nonquantifiable health effects. in other words, it terrorizes more effectively. set one off in midtown manhattan, and you would have reporters walking around with geiger counters talking about the half life of strontium 90 (30 years)

6 years after 9/11 we still have front page news stories about the air quality degradation of downtown manhattan in the weeks after 9/11. then epa chief whitman testifying last month, michale moore taking 9/11 rescue workers to cuba. a son of one of the workers who died from that went to the state of the union address ...in january 2007. this is 5.5 years later

catch my drift yet?

the people killed on 9/11 are dead and buried. almost 3,000 of them. even the dust from the event is all washed away. and yet the air quality issue lives on, and continues to involve us 6 years later. how many died from the dust? definitely or not? a dozen? a dirty bomb wouldn't have to kill a single person. at the moment of the explosion or ever from the radioactivity

it's all psychological, which is the whole point of terrorism in the first place

now imagine the ongoing media and societal handwringing that would go on with radioactive contamination. no matter how minimal. even if no one died. this is called terrorism. this is called fear. to paraphrase stalin ("a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"): the endless fretting over a nebulous, low grade continuous degradation to your health, for years, is a more effective terrorist tool than outright killing thousands of people in one sudden event that is then permanently over. radioactive contaimination is not uddenly over. even if the contamination is tiny and insignificant scientifically, you are not thinking about human psychology and how fear works

furthermore, i would like to add that if you are a liberal, and you downplay the effects of terrorism and hype the effects of government abuses, you fail. and if you are a conservative, and you downplay the effects of government abuses, and hype the effects of terrorism, you fail

the only intellectual and morally honest position is to worry about BOTH terrorism and government abuses. to downplay one or the other is intellectually dishonest, and means you are just another lousy biased partisan. terrorism is real and dangerous. government abuses are real and dangerous. anyone who sits there and tries to argue against simple human fear of either government abuses or terrorism has instantly achieved a state of losing the argument and missing the point

Re:The funny thing is

[CmdrGravy]

Additionally, the following highlights the difference between American and Glasweigan responses to terrorism.

America:"Oh my God! there was a man on fire, he was running about, i just
ran for my life..i thought i was gonna die,he got so close to me"
Glasgow: "C*nt wis running aboot on fire,so a ran up 'n gave him a good
boot,then decked him"

America:"I just wanna get home,away from here..i just wanna get home,i
thought i was gonna die"
Glasgow:"here shug, am no leaving here till am oan a f*ckin' plane!"

America:"there was pandemonium,people were running in all directions, we
didn't know what was happening, I thought i was gonna die"
Glasgow:"F*ck this fir a kerry oan,moan we ll get a pint in"

America:"We thought he was gonna blow us all up he had a gas canister,and
was trying to get into his trunk,i thought we were gonna die,i just ran for
my life" Glasgow:"a swaggered by the motor that wis on fire,and the dafty
couldnae even open his boot,he wis in fire annaw so a ran up n gave him a
good boot to the baws"

America:there was this huge explosion,it sounded like war,i thought i was
gonna die"
Glasgow:"There wis a bang,yi know when yi throw B.O basher intae a fire it
wis like that"

America:"i'm too traumatised even to speak,i thought i was gonna die"
Glasgow "here mate,gies 2 minutes till a phone ma auld dear,if am gonna be
oan the telly a want her tae tape it"