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Science & Technology
Dirty bomb material disappears in transit in Michigan
2021-07-30
[Zero Hedge] Radioactive material headed to Michigan from an Ohio company never made it to its destination, a filing by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed. In its "Current Event Notification" report for Wednesday, the commission that regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other civilian uses of nuclear materials in the United States said the Ohio Bureau of Radiation Protection had informed officials about a missing shipment involving Prime NDT Services.

The Ohio radiation bureau learned from Prime NDT that a source of Iridium-192
...which has a half life of 74 days...
was shipped through an unnamed carrier on July 12 from a facility in Strasburg, Ohio, to a facility in Michigan, the NRC said. Iridium-192 is a radioactive isotope of iridium, which can be used in industrial gauges that inspect welding seams in such equipment as pipelines and in medicine to treat certain cancers, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The material can also be used to make a dirty bomb.

According to the Detroit News, Prime NDT Services is an Ohio-based inspection company that performs testing services in the energy and industrial industries, many involving pipelines and other energy industry equipment.

The nuclear commission report categorized the isotope as a "Category 2" level of radioactive material, but did not specify the quantity of material that was being shipped or how it was packaged.

"Category 2 sources, if not safely managed or securely protected, could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them, or were otherwise in contact with them, for a short time (minutes to hours)," the report said. "It could possibly be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of hours to days."

According to the NRC classification scale, Category 1 nuclear materials are for strategic uses and include quantities in excess of 5 kilograms of uranium 235 or uranium-233 or 2 kilograms of plutonium. Five kilograms equals slightly more than 11 pounds. Think plutonium which Doc Brown stole from the Libyans.

Category 2 materials contain more than 1,000 grams of U-235 or more than 500 grams of U-233 or plutonium, or in a combined quantity of more than 1,000 grams. One thousand grams is equal to 2.2 pounds.

At the bottom is Category 3: materials would be those classified with more than 15 grams of U-235 or U-233 or plutonium alone or combined. Fifteen grams equals a little more than 8 ounces.

So here's the problem: "As of July 21, the source has not been delivered ..." the Ohio commission's notice to the NRC reads.

It was unclear how long shipping the material to Michigan would have been expected to take. The company is based in Ohio just south of Akron, but the Michigan delivery point was not specified. The carrier transmitting the material was redacted in the NRC notice.

The incident report refers to the shipment as a "Lost Source."

More@link
Posted by:Shereth Shavirt9128

#11  So it was never lost, they just didn’t know where it was.
Posted by: Grunter   2021-07-30 19:12  

#10  ^Thank G*d.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2021-07-30 17:38  

#9  Michigan-bound radioactive material reported missing has been recovered
Posted by: UPDATE-7-30-21   2021-07-30 17:10  

#8  guess those "white supremacist" got it.
Posted by: Chris   2021-07-30 16:43  

#7  Ref #6: Few would argue that fear, panic, and disruption appear to be the modern trend.
Posted by: Besoeker   2021-07-30 13:52  

#6  short lived radioisotopes are not dirty bomb material.

I'm not so sure. If your goal is blowing stuff up good, maybe not. But if your intent is to cause panic and a media event, a little bomb that scatters some debris and sets Geiger counters pinging madly, even if only for a few days, sounds like just the ticket. Can we get a ruling from the judges?
Posted by: SteveS   2021-07-30 13:49  

#5  Another misleading headline, short lived radioisotopes are not dirty bomb material.
Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839   2021-07-30 12:36  

#4  Actually, except for that pesky gamma ray this is a fairly "benign" isotope: short half-life and decays to "observationally stable" Platinum-192 (if I have read the table correctly). With its short half-life I am sure some industrial customer is beyond pissed that it disappeared in transit.
Posted by: magpie   2021-07-30 11:26  

#3  Another FBI lead crime so they can do a sting on it?
Posted by: DarthVader   2021-07-30 10:37  

#2  Glavirt, Hopefully not just a smaller circle temporarily centered on Detroit's Cong. Dist. 13.
Posted by: Glenmore   2021-07-30 09:55  

#1  Well, it's got to be here somewhere...



Let's play "Pin the Tail on the Nuclear Material"

Shall we...
Posted by: Glavirt Chasing8888   2021-07-30 08:33  

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