Tag Archives: Radioactive

Shipment of Uranium seized at UK’s Heathrow airport: Officials race to trace those involved

Radioactive Sign Emblem

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • NUKE PLOT SMASHED Deadly shipment of uranium seized at Heathrow en route to Iranians based in UK sparking terror probe
  • It was destined for Iranian nationals in the UK, originated from Pakistan and arrived on a flight from Oman.
  • A source said: “The race is on to trace everyone involved.”
  • The package suspected of being smuggled to UK-based Iranians arrived in the hold of a passenger jet.
  • Specialist scanners detected the potentially-lethal uranium as it was ferried to a freight shed, triggering alarms.
  • Officials will want to rule out any fears that a dirty bomb — a mixture of explosives with radioactive power — was being built here.
  • A former army chief has claimed the deadly shipment could have been used for a Litvinenko-style assassination plot.
  • Officials believe they have prevented any immediate threat to the public. They are being assisted by security services as they investigate the suspected plot
  • The Home Office said: “We do not comment on live investigations.”
  • Oman Air were contacted for comment. There is no indication the airline or Swissport is responsible for any wrongdoing.

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Militant interest in attacking nuclear sites stirs concern in Europe

Doel Nuclear Plant

By Geert De Clercq and Christoph Steitz

PARIS/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Meter-thick concrete walls and 1950s-style analog control rooms help protect nuclear plants from bomb attacks and computer hackers, but Islamist militants are turning their attention to the atomic industry’s weak spots, security experts say.

Concerns about nuclear terrorism rose after Belgian media reported that suicide bombers who killed 32 people in Brussels on March 22 originally looked into attacking a nuclear installation before police raids that netted a number of suspected associates forced them to switch targets.

Security experts say that blowing up a nuclear reactor is beyond the skills of militant groups, but that the nuclear industry has some vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

“The insider threat is one of the most difficult to deal with, as this hinges on the ability to screen employees and figure out the nature of their intentions,” said Page Stoutland at the U.S.-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), citing recent reported incidents in Belgium.

His assessment reflects growing anxiety among Western governments and regulators, including the U.N. nuclear watchdog (IAEA), about the risk of radicalised individuals gaining access to sensitive energy infrastructure, including nuclear sites.

In 2014, an investigation into a deliberate act of sabotage at Belgium’s Doel 4 nuclear reactor found that a former employee of the plant had died earlier in the year while fighting with Islamist militants in Syria.

In December, Belgian police found a video tracking the movements of a senior nuclear industry official during a search of a flat as part of investigations into the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 that killed 130 people. Security around Belgian nuclear power stations was ramped up as a result.

Industry experts say that deliberately triggering a disastrous meltdown of a nuclear reactor would be difficult as nobody is ever alone in its control room, which typically has four to six operators there at all times.

This, according to Bertrand Barre, a former executive at Areva, the state-owned nuclear reactor manufacturer, would reduce the risk of a suicide mission like the Germanwings disaster last year in which a pilot locked himself in the cockpit and crashed his plane into a mountain.

Deliberate acts of sabotage cannot be ruled out, though. In 2014, the Doel 4 reactor was halted four months after someone purposely damaged its turbine by draining 65,000 liters of oil. The perpetrator was never found.

The risk of cyber attacks is also increasing. Most nuclear plants were built before the Internet or even the computer age, and their control rooms run on 20th-century analog technology. But the NTI says that nuclear plants are now digitalizing quickly, increasing the risk that hackers could commandeer them.

PLUTONIUM SHIPMENTS

The biggest risk arises from the nuclear fuel cycle, which involves the enrichment of uranium, fuel production and recycling, transport and storage of radioactive material.

Specialists say the pools in which spent nuclear fuel is left to cool are more vulnerable than the reactors themselves.

“A scenario which leads to water loss by damage to the pools could lead to a release of radioactivity of the same or higher order than a core meltdown,” said Yves Marignac, director of energy consultant WISE-Paris.

Installations like La Hague in France or Sellafield in Britain – where spent fuel from dozens of reactors is stored in pools before it is reprocessed or put in casks for dry storage – pose a particular worry.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, French authorities deployed ground-to-air missiles in La Hague, though these were removed a few months later after the threat level was deemed to have receded.

Every week, plutonium – one of the two key ingredients in nuclear bombs, along with highly enriched uranium – is transported overland from La Hague to Marcoule in southern France for recycling into mixed-oxide fuel.

“We cannot have a number of identified high-level terrorists on the loose and put emergency legislation in place while at the same time shipping plutonium over public roads on a regular basis,” World Nuclear Industry Status Report lead author Mycle Schneider told Reuters.

France has been under a state of emergency since the Islamic State bombing and shooting rampage in Paris, with increased powers of search and arrest for police.

Areva defends the plutonium shipments, saying they are coordinated with state authorities, have armed escorts and are housed in containers that are “real fortresses” secured by 100 kg (220 pounds) of steel for every kg of plutonium.

DIRTY BOMB

Experts also worry about militants pilfering radioactive material from medical or industrial installations.

Radioactive isotopes are used in dozens of applications, from cancer treatment to pipeline-welding inspections, and thousands of packages with small amounts of radioactive material are shipped across Europe every year.

Stolen radioactive material from these shipments could be combined with traditional explosives to create a “dirty bomb”.

While the radioactivity spread by such a device is unlikely to be lethal, it would create huge panic and pollute a vast area that would be very expensive to decontaminate.

In 1995, Chechen rebels placed a cylinder of radioactive caesium in a Moscow park, but did not detonate it and alerted Russian authorities, who deactivated the device.

Since the mid-1990s, member states of the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency have reported about 2,800 instances of radioactive material going missing.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said last month only a handful of these incidents involved material that could be used to make a nuclear explosive device, but some of the missing material could go towards devising a dirty bomb.

“The fact there has never been a major terrorist attack involving radioactive material does not mean it could not happen,” Amano said.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Missing radioactive material found dumped in south Iraq

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Radioactive material that went missing in Iraq has been found dumped near a petrol station in the southern town of Zubair, officials said on Sunday, ending speculation it could be acquired by Islamic State and used as a weapon.

The officials told Reuters the material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, was undamaged and there were no concerns about radiation.

Reuters reported last week that Iraq had been searching for the material since it was stolen in November from a storage facility belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford near the southern city of Basra.

It was not immediately clear how the device, owned by Swiss inspections group SGS, ended up in Zubair, around 9 miles southwest of Basra.

“A passer-by found the radioactive device dumped in Zubair and immediately informed security forces which went with a special radiation prevention team and retrieved the device,” the chief of the security panel within Basra provincial council, Jabbar al-Saidi, told Reuters.

“After initial checking I can confirm the device is intact 100 percent and there is absolutely no concern of radiation.”

A security official close to the investigation said it had been established soon after the material was stolen that it was being kept in Zubair and controls had been tightened to prevent it being taken out of the town.

“After failing to take it out of the town, the perpetrators decided to dump it,” the security official said. “I assure you it is only a matter of time before we arrest those who stole the radioactive device.”

The material, which uses gamma rays to test flaws in materials used for oil and gas pipelines in a process called industrial gamma radiography, is owned by Istanbul-based SGS Turkey, according to the document and officials.

The material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source by the IAEA, meaning that if not managed properly it could cause permanent injury to a person in close proximity to it for minutes or hours, and could be fatal to someone exposed for a period of hours to days.

SGS and Weatherford have both denied responsibility for the disappearance of the material last year.

(Additional reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra; Writing by Isabel Coles; editing by Susan Thomas and Digby Lidstone)

Scientists Track Fukushima Radiation off Pacific Coast

Scientists who are studying the impacts of a nuclear power plant accident in Japan have discovered radiation is spreading to more sites off the Pacific Coast of the United States.

But the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute reported Thursday that even a sample with the highest-documented radiation level to date is still far below a threshold that should cause alarm.

The institute has been tracking the spread of radiation from the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima power plant, in which an earthquake set off a tsunami that struck the plant and caused three meltdowns. That event released some radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean.

Ken Bruessler, the director of the institute’s Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity, is part of a research team that’s monitoring the ocean for traces of that radioactive material. Over the past four years, they’ve observed small amounts of material, cesium-134, off the coast of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California.

The team recently found its most contaminated sample to date — 11 becquerals per cubic meter of ocean water, according to a news release. A becqueral is a unit used to measure radioactivity, and this sample was 50 percent higher than any other that’s ever been found off the West Coast.

Even at its highest figure yet, scientists say the sample is still more than 500 times lower than government standards for safe drinking water. It’s also OK for recreational activities like swimming, and Bruessler said in the news release that it’s also below safety limits for sea life.

Contamination levels are higher near Fukushima.

While Bruessler said in the news release that contamination levels near Japan “are thousands of times lower” than they were following the 2011 accident, recent samples collected there contain 10 to 100 times more radioactive material than those collected off the Pacific Coast. He said that indicates that the plant is still releasing radioactive material, though how much remains unclear.

The scientists also note that virtually any sample of Pacific Ocean water will have some level of radioactive material, as atomic weapons testing was performed there in parts of three decades.

Scientists say they know the contamination they’re measuring is from Fukushima and not left over from atomic bomb detonations because the specific type of radioactive material is different.

California Beach Radiation Proven Unrelated To Fukushima

Observers were more than a little surprised when soil testing showed a California beach that recorded radiation levels as much as 14 times the baseline level were not showing that higher total because of radioactive water from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant meltdown.

Initial concerns were that radioactive water from the 2011 meltdown had finally made its way to California shores.  However, testing showed that the soil did not contain any Cesium-137 found in the Fukushima release.

Testing showed the material was naturally radioactive radium and thorium.

The cause of the radioactivity has not yet been identified and officials say even though the radiation is not coming from the Fukushima disaster it does not mean it’s safe to be on that beach.

Local experts say it’s possible that a thorium vein could be coming out of nearby coastal bluffs.  Reports also found an oil pipeline once ran near the site and those pipes have a tendency to collect heavy radioactive minerals.

Further testing is being done to find the radiation source.

Mexican Truck Containing Radioactive Material Stolen

A truck containing dangerous radioactive material was stolen from a gas station near Mexico City on Monday.

Officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency said Mexican officials informed them of the theft in a statement Wednesday.

The truck contained radioactive cobalt-60 from a hospital in Tijuana that was being transported to a waste disposal site. The IAEA said the material was properly shielded for safety when the truck was stolen but that it’s impossible to know if the thieves have breached that shielding.

“Whoever has or finds the equipment is urged not to open or damage it, as in these cases it can cause severe health problems,” the agency said.

Intelligence officials say that in the wrong hands the material could be used to make a “dirty bomb”.

A massive search is underway in six Mexican states and Mexico City. The white Volkswagen truck has been shown on TV and in newspapers with phone numbers for citizens to call if they spot it.

Floating Debris Island Headed Toward California

A floating island of debris at least three times the size of Great Britain is aimed for the California coastline.

The debris, all from the 2011 tsunami in Japan, is composed of destroyed homes and businesses, cars and boats. While some pieces of debris have washed up on the California shore starting in 2012, scientists expect this giant wave of debris to hit the coastline at the same time.

In addition to the debris, the giant island is bringing potentially destructive non-native ocean life and radioactive water.

Oceanographers say that marine life non-native to the U.S. west coast usually dies as it crosses the Pacific Ocean because of most shipping routes. However, the path of the debris has kept to water temperatures that would allow some species to survive. If the marine life is able to adapt to the California coast, scientists are concerned it could be devastating to the native life.

NOAA says that so far 1,600 debris reports have been conclusively linked to the tsunami.

Another Accident At Fukushima Plant Covers Workers In Radioactive Water

A third accident with radioactive water from storage tanks has exposed at least six workers to radioactivity according to Tokyo Electric Power Company.

The plant has been suffering a series of accidents since the 2011 tsunami that caused meltdowns in three reactors. The plant has been pumping in large amounts of water to keep the reactors cool since the accident and have been storing them in unreliable storage tanks.

TEPCO reported a worker removed a pipe connected to a water treatment system and six workers in the location of the tank were sprayed with contaminated water. The company said they have not yet been able to determine the level of radiation each worker was exposed to.

On Monday, the plant experienced a minor emergency when a worker accidentally switched off power to pumps that sent water into the reactors to cool them.