Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Who Smuggle Radioactive Materials
Lasrick writes: Although the complicity of scientists in the smuggling of radioactive materials has been a long-standing concern, smuggling-prevention efforts have so far failed to recognize a key aspect to the problem: scientists are often sought out to test the quality and level of the material well before it is taken to the black market. Egle Murauskaite of the U.S. National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) describes why concentrating on this aspect of the smuggling process, long considered less egregious than the actual selling of the material, could really make a difference in keeping radioactive materials off the black market in the first place.
watch out for the NSA
There is no black market for radionuclides - they are useless for criminals. And terrorists would want either something REALLY hot for a dirty bomb (in which case they don't need to do any tests except standing nearby with a dosimeter) or highly enriched uranium or weapons-grade plutonium. Both require expertise to turn into actual weapons.
We know that it is happening since 1985, there had been at least a case of a scientist (E.Brown, if i'm not mistaken) smuggling plutonium to give it to libyan terrorists, or even doing very dangerous experiments with it.
So I bought some Plutonium-186 from Frederick Hallam. Performed exactly as promised. Used to make Electron Pump. Excellent energy source. Would purchase again.
There's a lot of legitimate uses for elements and isotopes, and I can see people not wanting to get all mixed up with government red tape. Do we have a very good reason to ban trade or ownership of THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF MATTER? I mean, I could see restrictions on the few isotopes that could be used to make nuclear weapons, but other than that it's just another hazardous material.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
No, we're going to need 3 more new agencies.
Unfortunately, there are no more TLAs left so the function will have to be folded into existing agencies.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Honestly this all sounds like a badly written excuse for persecuting scientists who offer inconvenient truths by calling them terrorists whenever it suits them. If we're lucky it is just part of their "keep fear alive" brigade trying to gin up nonexistent threats anyway they can, like "cyberwar".
The black market for radioactive material is crushingly predominately for military or civilian usage of country which have difficulty of getting the material by normal means for a variety of reason. Not terror. In fact let us count the incidents :
1) two incidents with the Chechen burying something in Russia in both case it was source which were orphaned.
2) 2 counts of some intelligence source pretending al quaeda or similar wanting to do radiological bomb (among them Jose padilla which was not even charged for that ! It tells you how much evidence or even capacity the guy had for that).
3) Russia Killing somebody using polonium. Oh wait that's not terror that's assassination by a major country
That's it. NONE of those involved scientist smuggling radioactive material. So why the heck such story come up on regular basis , when it is quite certain that the black market for radioactive material is NOT for terror.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I know of a scientist who smuggled a small amount of plutonium into the US. It was needed for an XRF instrument.
I wonder how much of this goes on for legit scientific investigations simply because the legal channels are so difficult to deal with.
Wow, dude. You need to do real research. You clearly didn't even bother reading the article, which gave incidents much more serious then you mention.
The IAEA keeps a database of incidents. Here's a hit from a quick Google search.
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull461/illicit_nuclear_trafficking_3.html
Between the period 1993 to 2003 alone there were 540 confirmed illicit trafficking incidents. Of those 540, 18 involved highly enriched uranium or plutonium.
And that was 2003. We've had another decade since then.
Most incidents aren't reported in the regular news cycle. By the time an incident becomes public knowledge too much time has past for regular people to care. So the only way to understand the actual threat is by following the research. The 24-hour news cycle and political pundits (scare mongers, peaceniks) aren't going to provide anything even remotely related to the facts.
Seems like if you want a real terror attack you just need some ebola victims, or a few vials of blood.
Forget wasting time on radioactives, which will be easy to track, get a few vials of something and until you crack the lid good luck on them catching you.
By the same logic you could prevent technologists from assisting the intelligence community. But the government has tons of money to offer, so it's not practical to cut off the supply of talent. Perhaps some sort of blacklist would work...
On the contrary, I fear the biggest nuclear threat in the modern world is from individual "terror" groups. In the age of Mutually Assured Destruction, the only people with nothing to lose are those who can't be tied to a specific region. If a group of unaffiliated individuals attack a country, that country has no recourse for nuclear retaliation.
I highly recommend the documentary "Countdown to Zero", it recounts the stories of a couple of extremist organisations caught in the process of acquiring nuclear material, and the frightening thing is that most of these cases were caught by accident, ie. luck. And if those were found by accident, we have no idea how many transactions may have been successful.
To quote a Russian military prosecutor with regards to the tracking & security of nuclear material during the collapse of the Soviet Union:
"potatoes were guarded better"
I think the more important thing is the trafficking of brainpower, and even releasing public domain information, that anyone in the world can use to build a bomb from dirt and rock or even seawater nearby, if they really wanted to. It's better to take such people out before they get lost, and to control information stored on computer harddrives, and put every file there is in the world on the cloud, ban any personal data storage devices such as usb keychains, instead have everyone use smartphones or computing devices that refuse to function unless connected to the hive and subject themselves to logging and monitoring. This way we can always see who reads about nuclear materials, who designs nuclear materials, and what not. Yay. How about we run into space onto space stations, and once you got 7 billion people in space and 7 billion down here on Earth, nobody will give a fuck if people down on Earth start a mutually assured destruction nuclear holocaust war, because life will survive just fine in outer space. Similarly with biotech getting out of hand with crazy infections that wipe out all life. The only problem is artificial intelligence, which can come and chase you down anywhere in the solar system, and that kinda requires cloud storage and monitoring of all computing technologies, while we build a humongous spaceship to travel to far stars, for a 70,000 year journey, or so, for a few lightyears, so, hopefully, if 35,000 years down the road AI appears back on Earth, they are not gonna be smart enough to travel much faster closer to the speed of light, and you could safely escape AI, at least for a while. Unless, the AI is really smart and deceiving, and you keep in touch with Terra, or Earth, your communication signal taking almost a year or two to make it back and forth (that's quite a lag, as in hello, anyone there, 2 years later the reply comes, yeah,) so the AI might have taken over and fake it as if they did not, and you can never find out from the communications what to really believe, especially if you're not cleverer than the cleverer than you AI. AI, along the lines of the movie "Screamers" 1996 is the only thing humanity and other life needs to worry about, for everything else, including nuclear holocausts and global biotech weapon epidemics wiping everybody out, the solution is simple: live on space stations, too, that way you don't keep all your eggs in one basket.
Blah, over the 25 post for my karma level, as sillybilly, must post as anonymous user. So here, I'll sign it like a letter, or like on wikipedia:(and now it does not want whitespace, to push the sig to the bottom right, hmm)
And I shall forever remain
your faithful servant, Sire,
Yours truly, &c
sillybilly
Anno Domini MMXIV,
Dies Mercurri, Augustus XIII
IV:XI Ante Meridiam (GMT)
Also, it's like as long as other countries have nuclear weapons, almost any country in the world has an excuse to have some too, for defense purposes, not to actually use it and attack, but just to have some so they don't get kicked around by the big boys. So the best thing would be to outlaw any nuclear weapons and warheads in the world, and then you can argue with the little countries too, that you are not gonna steam roll them nuclearly, you're going to do that with conventional and environmentally friendly and kosher weapons that kill without pain, but more like they put you in a state of ecstasy, then you fall asleep, and never wake up. That'd be like the ideal weapon, kill other people by letting them have an orgasm right before they die, then they get knocked asleep and never wake up. Better than a final feast and what not, how about a final masturbation, for true happiness, to the deathrow inmates, or unlucky folks about to die on a battlefield. Conventional weapons with bullets cause too much pain, and a couple seconds of minutes of awareness and suffering, that's a horrible way to go, somebody should come up with really good ways to die. A new ballgame in town. Instead of tear gas that hurts, spread hallucinogens that put people into a state of ecstasy and euphoria, but they loose their self control and things like gait. Fuck nuclear weapons. Even the terrorists should abide by these principles of least harm done while killing, no matter how badly they may hate the other person's guts. And then heck, I wouldn't even mind getting killed like that. That's what you'd call environmentally friendly and humane weapons
And I shall forever remain
your faithful servant, Sire,
Yours truly, &c
sillybilly
Anno Domini MMXIV,
Dies Mercurri, Augustus XIII
IV:XXIV Ante Meridiam (GMT)
Just start over and use "AAA".
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
In order to continue the "War On Terror" they need to invent bogey men. Reality does matter to those people, just watch TV "News" every now and again.
A point that you miss is that there are countless beneficial uses for radioactive materials that are not related to terrorism, in fact every time you go near a medical facility pay attention to all of the signs.
When is the last time you ever heard a "3rd world countries only want uranium so that they can terrorize the world" speaking politician mention how they believe those countries can achieve medical procedures we use every day in hospitals and labs (not including Universities and other research facilities) without radioactive isotopes. Things like X-Rays, Chemotherapy, CT scans, and everything else found in a Nuclear Medicine office (which is a pretty long list).
Before you "but that's radioactive Iodine, not Uranium" you hopefully know that production of radioactive Iodine requires Uranium. The difference between weapons grade and medical grade Uranium is how much enrichment is done (much less for Medical use, much more for Military use)
Not to stray from the point, but I'd guess that there really is a black market for radioactive materials. The reason for that would not be for "dirty bombing terrorist acts", but because some nations block production in other countries. Prohibitions don't work, and often have an opposite result from the intention.
Iran for example was the target of a massive amount of espionage and insurgency trying to destroy their production, even though their enrichment was just enough for medical purposes (repeatedly verified by UN inspectors). And if you are one of the "Iran is Evil" believers, pray tell us who that so called aggressive nation hell bent on the destruction of Israel and takeover of the world has attacked in the last 200 years? They had to defend themselves against a US armed Saddam Hussein, but did not start that conflict.
With that much money being spent to stop Iran from production, what do you think a Hospital in Cambodia does? Argue when the US yells "terrorist!" and try to produce their own anyway with incredible cost and risk, or buy it elsewhere. Probably the latter, especially when it's probably cheaper and faster to acquire on a black market without all the red tape.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Here's what he is really saying: "We need to spread FUD about another non-issue to make even more funding and power come our way for anti-terrorism efforts."
Wow, dude. You need to do real research. You clearly didn't even bother reading the article, which gave incidents much more serious then you mention.
Wow, dude. To do actual research you have to read and understand text and your research clearly shows that capability lacking. Trafficking incindents aren't acts of terror. Parent says that of the few reported incidents where humans were harmed by purpose there was no smuggling involved. That doesn't lead to there was no trafficking as the material is also needed for a lot of medical stuff and some people have a hard time getting it on the free market, because they maybe could eventually use it for acts of terrorism.
Following your logic:
All people who smuggle alcohol are also terrorists, because it is used in Molotov cocktails.
If a group of unaffiliated individuals attack a country, that country has no recourse for nuclear retaliation.
Some governments, at least including the US, various UK states such as Canada and Australia, the PRC, and some continental European powers, have had agents working full time on just getting samples of radionucleotides from various fission plants, and analyzing those samples so that, if those nucleotides turn up in a dirty bomb or worse, an actual fission device, they can tell just where they were made by differences in various isotopic ratios, trace elements, and such. Knowing the source does not always mean those nations would retaliate against an attack from a group of apparently non-affiliated individuals, but it's certainly one piece of evidence in building a case for retaliation that would satisfy at least part of the international community. Nations have some interest therefore in reporting thefts of materials internationally, and various governments have some interest in setting up conditions for such reporting (i.e. in some cases, assuring the reporting country this will be classified and not released, and so hopefully not available for political candidate's uses.)
I'd say that against groups such as you describe, it may not be possible to respond with nuclear retaliation, or recourses may be limited. It may also be desirable to respond with something less damaging to innocent bystanders, other nations, and the environment, even if a nuclear option is possible. This could go anywhere from a use of actual boosted fission devices within hours of the first event, to a much more measured response, possibly weeks or even longer after the first event.
By the way, probably the most workable term for 'unaffiliated individuals' in US sources is "non-state actors", relatively short, straight-forward and to the point. In the US, emergency response teams called NEST would be responsible for the first stages of gathering samples from a dirty bomb incident or similar event, but their primary purpose is to stop such events before there is a detonation or risk to the public, if that's still possible when they become involved. NEST now stands for Nuclear Emergency Support Team, but in some older sources, the S stood for Search instead of Support. Calling one a NEST Team is redundant, but occasionally done by the media. NESTs are authorized to respond to incidents both inside and outside US borders, but just what that means in practice is unclear..
Who is John Cabal?
One wonders if anyone who would sell nuclear materials to a terrorist organization, or would sell to nations whose behavior most of the world disapproves of, might attempt to modify the profile/fingerprint of nuclear material, prior to sale, to make it resemble the profile/fingerprint of nuclear material produced by an enemy state, to implicate them or at least cast doubt on the true origin of the materials.
Depends on the recipe for your molotov cocktail ... I use gasoline & 2-stroke oil, works perfect :-)
The pump is Bad... :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Too much competition for "AAA" according to my copy of the local Yellow Pages.
Better to expand into Unicode for the next round of TLA's.
Those are hindering or directly endangering the government's work. They should be transferred to gitmo.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
If only there was only some kind of NATIONAL secret, shadowy group to watch these guys.
I'm sorry, there is No Such Agency.
Well, what law enforcement could do is pose as testing scientists. Have a gossied up ATM and call it a "mass spectrometer" in which people can test their materials for a fee, by inserting the sample into the machine. The machine reports that the material is fake. Then if they perform any obvious crime they can be arrested on the spot, or if they're very crafty, the authorities still have record of them possessing whatever material they put in the machine, and the authorities can have it tested for real at their leisure.
No, you need to use ALCOHOL for a Molotov cocktail. Absolut!
Mostly vodka, but mix in some strong proletarian liquors from countries with active communist factions circa 1938 (grappa, gin, calvados), serve chilled, garnish with a slice of lenon, and consume with revolutionary fervor.
And if those were found by accident, we have no idea how many transactions may have been successful.
Probably about none, since there have been no successful or attempted nuclear or radiological terrorist attacks. And if they have the material, it seems unlikely they'd sit on it and risk being discovered, rather than using it.
"Although the complicity of scientists in the smuggling of radioactive materials has been a long-standing concern"
First I've heard of this, what are the names of these scientists caught smuggling of radioactive materials? I do believe we're in greater danger from nation states selling actual nuclear bombs to other nation states.