Week of 24 June 2002
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced in a 25 June press release that the materials needed to build a 'dirty bomb' are widespread and generally ill protected. Nearly every country in the world has radioactive sources and more than 100 countries may have inadequate programs to prevent or even detect their theft, reported the New York Times (26 June, www.nytimes.com).
These sources are used for a variety of peaceful purposes, said Newsday (26 June, www.newsday.com), including radiotherapy for medical care, industrial radiography, preservation of foodstuffs, and sterilization of medical instruments.
However when coupled with conventional explosives, a radioactive source could be used as a terrorists weapon. The blast of a 'dirty bomb' would not create a nuclear explosion or cause a large number of deaths, but rather disperse radioactive material over a wide area causing social and economic disruption, reported the Financial Times (25 June, www.ft.com).
"With about 20,000 significant radioactive sources in the world today, I think it's fair to guess that the problem, potentially at least, is everywhere," Canada's Globe and Mail (26 June, www.globeandmail.com) quoted IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky as saying.
Though the IAEA has not listed the 100 countries that may have inadequate security programs, the Agency notes that some 70 sources are lost in the European Union each year, and 1500 sources have been lost in the United States since 1996, reported BBC News (25 June, news.bbc.co.uk). The Associated Press (26 June, www.ap.org) reported that the IAEA identifies one known problem area - the former Soviet States.
To confront this issue the IAEA, along with the United States and Russia, have joined in a concerted effort to secure radioactive sources in Russia as well as the former Soviet States, reported the Washington Post (25 June, Page A15, www.washingtonpost.com). The $40 million program, said the Boston Globe (21 June, www.boston.com/globe), will be managed by the IAEA.
"One of our priorities is to assist states in creating and strengthening national regulatory infrastructures to ensure that these radioactive sources are appropriately registered and adequately secured at all times," Mohamed ElBarabei, the head of the IAEA, was quoted as saying by CBS News (25 June, www.cbsnews.com).
In the United States, action intensified on several fronts to increase controls and funding for the security of radioactive sources, the Global Security Newswire of the Nuclear Threat Initiative reported (27 June, www.nti.org).
During the week of 24 June 2002, press stories on radioactive sources appeared in The Boston Globe, New Scientist, Associated Press Newswires, Dow Jones International News, Reuters, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Agence France-Presse, NucNet News, BBC News, The Independent, Globe and Mail, The Wall Street Journal, Channelnewsasia, Kyodo News, Financial Times, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, All Africa Global Media, Inter Press Service, Ottawa Citizen, The Vancouver Sun, The Windsor Star, The Gazette, Calgary Herald, CTV News and Current Affairs, The Globe and Mail.