Radioactive Material Stolen In Iraq Raises Security Fears (reuters.com)

mdsolar writes with a link to a Reuters report that begins: Iraq is searching for 'highly dangerous' radioactive material stolen last year, according to an environment ministry document and seven security, environmental and provincial officials who fear it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State. The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing in November from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford WFT.N, the document seen by Reuters showed and officials confirmed. A spokesman for Iraq's environment ministry said he could not discuss the issue, citing national security concerns.

Comments

Highly dangerous?

[Alwin Henseler]

From the article:

belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford WFT.N

Going out on a limb here, but that'll likely be a source for pipe inspections or similar jobs? Read: relatively small quantity, and no way that would be bomb-making material. Even if it fell into the wrong hands, then at worst such material could be used as ingredient of a small-scale dirty bomb: a conventional bomb with 'special sauce' to cause a "radioactive!" scare. For that purpose probably more dangerous to anyone trying to do so, than for the people in a target area.

Granted, in terms of victims / environment / health hazards that could still do some damage. But in the greater scheme of things, I'd take "highly dangerous" with a grain of salt here.

Re:a year ago?

[Dunbal]

It has a half life of 73.8 days (Ir-192). So already it is half as radioactive as it used to be. While it would take a long time (4 years) for the sample to fully decay, the exponential nature of radioactive decay means that most of those 4 years are spent going from a very small amount of radioactivity to zero radioactivity thanks to diminishing returns. Also if you bear in mind that with a bomb you would be spreading this material over a very large area (because terrorists like to think big, so they would probably go for as spectacular an explosion as they could manage), a depleted sample would not provide much more than background radiation after a few half-lives. If you're going to build an effective dirty bomb you really want to steal something with a much longer half-life.

Re:a year ago?

[thermopile]

Iridium-192 sources like the one stolen are typically sold in the US at activities between 50 and 100 Ci. They're used to take "x-rays" of pipe welds to look for porosity, evenness, cracks, etc.

The actual seed source is about as big as a pencil eraser, maybe a little smaller. Thus, it would be hard to repurpose as a dirty bomb - it's a lump and all it would do is fly somewhere else in an explosion.

Radioactive sources are lost all the time. This website from the NRC keeps a log of all lost sources. While losing a source like this in Iraq is unfortunate, it's not uncommon.