Theft of radioactive materials in Russia
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Despite the efforts of the US CTR programme and its sister programmes run by the Department of Energy (DOE) more nuclear material than no remains vulnerable to theft. Surprisingly, material that has gone missing has disappeared from nuclear power plants in Russia and the former republics, as opposed to weapons-grade material storage sites. Yet unaccounted for material, such as caesium and strontium, is still potential dirty bomb material and poses a terrorist as well as an environmental threat.
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Soviet-era plutonium that was never accounted for after the Cold War could fuel roughly 25 nuclear weapons as powerful as the "Fat Man" atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in World War II, former Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed said Monday, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.
The risk that terrorists will acquire and use atomic weapons will increase in coming decades as nuclear technology and expertise proliferate, according to a U.S. intelligence report released last week, the Global Security Newswire reported.
There were close to 250 thefts of nuclear and radioactive material in a 12-month period that ended in June, a figure International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday called “disturbingly high,” the New York Times reported.
- Nuclear Russia