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SAN FRANCISCO: International researchers have compiled what they say is the world’s most complete database of lost, stolen and misplaced nuclear material — depicting a world awash in weapons-grade uranium and plutonium that nobody can account for.
“It truly is frightening,” Lyudmila Zaitseva, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies (IIS), said on Wednesday.
“I think this is the tip of the iceberg.”
Stanford announced its database as US senators held a hearing in Washington to assess the threat of “dirty bombs,” or radioactive material dispersed by conventional explosives.
The Stanford programme, dubbed the Database on Nuclear Smuggling, Theft and Orphan Radiation Sources (DSTO), is intended to help governments and international agencies track wayward nuclear material worldwide, supplementing existing national programmes which often fail to share information.
CHILLING FACTS: The facts, even on cursory examination, are chilling.
Zaitseva said that, over the past ten years, at least 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of weapons-usable uranium and plutonium had been stolen from poorly-protected nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union.
Other thefts have included several fuel rods which disappeared from a research reactor in the Congo in the mid-1990s. While one of these fuel rods later resurfaced in Italy — reportedly in the hands of the Mafia — the other has not been found.
The Stanford group, led by nuclear physicist and arms control researcher Friedrich Steinhausler, decided to form its database after becoming alarmed at how patchy most of the available information was.
“ORPHAN” RADIATION: The database includes both illicitly obtained weapons-grade nuclear material as well as “orphaned” radiation sources — scientific or medical material that may have been lost, misplaced or simply thrown away but which still poses a health and security threat.
Zaitseva, visiting Stanford from the Kazakhstan National Nuclear Center, said the database was helping to build a dim picture of the market for stolen uranium, plutonium, and other dangerous materials.
But she added that while in many cases those behind nuclear thefts can be identified, the ultimate destination of the nuclear material has remained a mystery.
She added that the dangers of an unsupervised, underground market in nuclear material were likely to grow, noting that a US sponsored programme to secure nuclear components in the former Soviet Union had thus far only locked up about a third of an estimated 600 tons of weapons-usable material.—Reuters
