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Editorial: Vulnerable Radiological Sites Cause for Concern
Dallas Morning News
June 18, 2010

When counter-terrorism specialists talk about the importance of averting a potential "dirty bomb" attack, the public's natural tendency is to focus on big nuclear sites, such as power plants and weapons facilities. Few of us would worry about, say, an obscure hospital in central Brazil or a metal scrap yard in southern Spain.

We should. According to nonproliferation experts, potent radioactive ingredients for a "dirty bomb" are available at vulnerable industrial and medical sites around the world. The small amount of Cesium-137 in a blood irradiator – found in cancer-treatment clinics worldwide – would have been enough to render Times Square uninhabitable for years had it been contained in the bomb found there in early May.

In the United States alone, such irradiators are in use at an estimated 1,000 facilities. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission keeps a tight watch on them, and efforts are under way to phase them out altogether. Outside the United States, experts say, controls tend to be much looser, and that's a major cause of concern.

As of May, the regulatory commission reported that 99 countries had made non-binding commitments to boost the safety and security of such radiological sources – but only nine had actually implemented tighter procedures. China alone could have up to 400,000 such radiological sources, says Kenneth Luongo, president of the Partnership for Global Security and a former government nonproliferation adviser. "I worry about radiological sources a lot. This should be a worldwide [security] issue."

In June 1998, radiation levels over parts of Europe skyrocketed and sparked an international alert after a discarded medial radiotherapy device containing Cesium-137 wound up in a metal scrap yard furnace in southern Spain. In Goiania, Brazil, a clinic abandoned a radiotherapy table in 1987. Scavengers dismantled it, discovered the glowing, blue Cesium-137 inside and parceled it out to friends. Authorities narrowly stopped a bag of the Cesium from being thrown into a river. The incident left four dead, 28 injured, 249 others contaminated and 112,000 placed under contamination watch. Similar incidents occurred in Mexico City, Ciudad Juarez, China, Algeria and Morocco between 1962 and 1983.

Those were more innocent times, before the 9/11 attacks. Today, the world should need no reminders of the threat posed by terrorist groups who will spare no effort to obtain radioactive materials. Americans should be concerned about lax security measures at hospitals and other radiological sources far beyond our borders, particularly in the developing world, because they are the most vulnerable and easily accessible places for terrorists to find their doomsday-bomb ingredients.

Declaring this as a top national priority is not enough. The administration must press for full and immediate compliance among the 99 nations that have pledged to tighten their radiological security.