Radical terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State have stated their interest in acquiring and using radioactive material in a dirty bomb, and in 2016, Belgian investigators discovered terrorists monitoring an employee at a highly enriched uranium reactor that also produces medical isotopes for a large part of Europe. Sep 13, 2019  The former deputy chief of U.S. Cyber Command has warned of the dangers of nation-state cyber weapons in terrorist hands. ISIS Or Al-Qaeda Could Attack Using ‘Dirty Bomb.

If this is your first time visiting National Terror Alert you may want to subscribe to our.You will only see this message on your first visit to the site. Thanks for visiting!Dirty BombBecause of recent terrorist events, people have expressed concern about the possibility of a terrorist attack involving radioactive materials, possibly through the use of a “dirty bomb,” and the harmful effects ofradiation from such an event. This fact sheet was prepared to help people understand what a dirty bomb is and how it may affect their health. What is a Dirty BombA dirty bomb, or radiological dispersion device, is a bomb that combines conventional explosives, such as dynamite, with radioactive materials inthe form of powder or pellets.

The idea behind a dirty bomb is to blast radioactive material into the area around the explosion. This could possibly cause buildings and people to be exposed to radioactive material. The main purpose of a dirty bomb is to frighten people and make buildings or land unusable for a long period of time. Dirty bomb versus atomic bombs in Hiroshima and NagasakiThe atomic explosions that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conventional nuclear weapons involving a fission reaction. A dirty bomb is designed to spread radioactive material and contaminate a small area. It does not include the fission products necessary to create a large blast like those seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How much expertise does it take to make a dirty bomb?Not much more than it takes to make a conventional bomb.

No special assembly is required; the regular explosive would simply disperse the radioactive material packed into the bomb. The hard part is acquiring the radioactive material, not building the bomb. The Washington Post reported in March 2002 that the Bush administration’s consensus view was that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network probably had such often-stolen radioactive contaminants as strontium 90 and cesium 137, which could be used to make a dirty bomb. In January 2003, British officials found documents in the Afghan city of Herat that led them to conclude that al Qaeda had successfully built a small dirty bomb. In late December 2003, homeland security officials worried that al Qaeda would detonate a dirty bomb during New Year’s Eve celebrations or college football bowl games, according to The Washington Post.

The Department of Energy sent scores of undercover nuclear scientists with radiation detection equipment to key locations in five major U.S. Cities, the Post reported.The relative ease of constructing such weapons makes them a particularly worrisome threat, counterterrorism experts say. Even so, expertise matters. Not all dirty bombs are equally dangerous: the cruder the weapon, the less damage caused. We don’t know if terrorists could handle and detonate high-grade radioactive material without fatally injuring themselves first.

Is a dirty bomb a nuclear weapon?No. Nuclear weapons involve a complex nuclear-fission reaction and are thousands of times more devastating. Is a dirty bomb a weapon of mass destruction?Yes, but more because of its capacity to cause terror and disruption than its ability to inflict heavy casualties, experts say. Depending on the sophistication of the bomb, wind conditions, and the speed with which the area of the attack was evacuated, the number of deaths and injuries from a dirty bomb explosion might not be substantially greater than from a conventional bomb explosion. But panic over radioactivity and evacuation measures could snarl a city. Moreover, the area struck would be off-limits for at least several months—possibly years—during cleanup efforts, which could paralyze a local economy and reinforce public fears about being near a radioactive area.

Sources of the radioactive material in Dirty BombsThere has been a lot of speculation about where terrorists could get radioactive material to place in a dirty bomb. The most harmful radioactive materials are found in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons sites. However, increased security at these facilities makes obtaining materials from them more difficult. Because of the dangerous and difficult aspects of obtaining high-level radioactive materials from a nuclear facility, there is a greater chance that the radioactive materials used in a dirty bomb would come from low-level radioactive sources.

Low-level radioactive sources are found in hospitals, on construction sites, and at food irradiation plants. The sources in these areas are used to diagnose and treat illnesses, sterilize equipment, inspect welding seams, and irradiate food to kill harmful microbes. Dangers of a dirty bombIf low-level radioactive sources were to be used, the primary danger from a dirty bomb would be the blast itself. Gauging how much radiation might be present is difficult when the source of the radiation is unknown. However, at the levels created by most probable sources, not enough radiation would be present in a dirty bomb to cause severe illness from exposure to radiation. Past use of dirty bombsAccording to a United Nations report, Iraq tested a dirty bomb device in 1987 but found that the radiation levels were too low to cause significant damage.

Thus, Iraq abandoned any further use of the device. What people should do following the explosion of a dirty bomb. Meaning of besieged in hindi. Radiation cannot be seen, smelled, felt, or tasted by humans. Therefore, if people are present at the scene of an explosion from a suspected dirty bomb, they will not know whether radioactive materials were involved at the time of the explosion. If people are not too severely injured by the initial blast,they should:. Leave the immediate area on foot. Do not panic.

Do not take public or private transportation such as buses, subways, or cars because if radioactive materials were involved, they may contaminate cars or the public transportation system. Go inside the nearest building. Staying inside will reduce people’s exposure to any radioactive material from a dirty bomb that may be on dust at the scene. Remove their clothes as soon as possible, place them in a plastic bag, and seal it. Removing clothing will remove most of the contamination caused by external exposure to radioactive materials.

Saving the contaminated clothing would allow testing for exposure without invasive sampling. Take a shower or wash themselves as best they can.

Washing will reduce the amount of radioactive contamination on the body and will effectively reduce total exposure. Be on the lookout for information.

Once emergency personnel can assess the scene and the damage, they will be able to tell people whether radiation was involved. Even if people do not know whether radioactive materials were present, following these simple steps can help reduce their injury from other chemicals that might have been present in the blast. Taking potassium iodide (KI)Potassium iodide, also called KI, only protects a person’s thyroid gland from exposure to radioactive iodine.

KI will not protect a person from other radioactive materials or protect other parts of the body from exposure to radiation. It must be taken prior to exposure (for example, if people hear that a radioactive cloud is coming their way) or immediately after exposure to be effective. Since there is no way to know at the time of an incident whether radioactive iodine was used in the explosive device, taking KI would probably not be beneficial.Also, KI can be dangerous to some people. Taking KI is not recommended unless there is a risk of exposure to radioactive iodine. If radioactive materials were involvedKeep televisions or radios tuned to local news networks.

If a radioactive material was released, people will be told where to report for radiation monitoring and blood tests to determine whether they were exposed to the radiation as well as what steps to take to protect their health. Risk of cancer from a dirty bombSome cancers can be caused by exposure to radiation. Being at the site where a dirty bomb exploded does not guarantee that people were exposed to the radioactive material.

Until doctors are able to check people’s skin with sensitive radiation detection devices, it will not be clear whether they were exposed. Just because people are near a radioactive source for a short time or get a small amount of radioactive material on them does not mean that they will get cancer. Doctors will be able to assess risks after the exposure level has been determined.

SEATTLE — Scientific experts warned Congress more than a decade ago that just four teaspoons of radioactive cesium-137 — if spread by a terrorist’s “dirty bomb” — could contaminate up to 10 square miles of Manhattan.The material is commonly found across the United States. Hospitals, blood banks and medical research centers use it in devices called irradiators, which sterilize blood and tissue. Hundreds of the devices are licensed for use, including at least 50 in Southern California.Each typically contains about twice as much radioactive material as the scientific panel warned could disrupt much of the nation’s largest city.The panel’s warning in 2008 came with blunt recommendations: The government should stop licensing new cesium-based blood irradiators, and existing ones should be withdrawn from use. Safer devices that use X-ray technology worked just as well, the panel found.But after protests from hospitals, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission declined to crack down. Instead, the number of licensed irradiators used for blood — and the risk they pose — has grown, a Los Angeles Times investigation shows.

Since those recommendations, several developed countries have converted away from cesium. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, by contrast, has not only continued to license new irradiators, it has also declined to require users to post financial bonds that would guarantee proper handling and eventual disposal of the material. Such performance bonds are mandatory for utilities licensed to operate nuclear power plants.In a memo to the commissioners on April 7, 2016, the commission’s top staff official, Executive Director for Operations Victor M. McCree, wrote that financial assurance requirements “should be expanded” to include cesium irradiators and other similarly significant sources of radiation.The commissioners have not acted.The Times interviewed more than 50 current and former government officials, along with medical industry specialists and other technical experts and examined thousands of pages of state and federal records to study the risk posed by cesium irradiators.A dirty bomb packed with cesium would not kill large numbers of people.

Instead, it would be a weapon of “mass disruption” — leaving areas uninhabitable for months or even decades and increasing long-term cancer risks for people who come in contact with it, atomic experts say.Though a dirty bomb has not been successfully detonated, terrorists have voiced keen interest in doing so. For instance, in 2011 an extremist named Anders Breivik, who killed 77 Norwegians with a fertilizer bomb and firearms, released a manifesto in which he called for followers to help him acquire cesium and other components “to construct and detonate a radiological bomb.”. Federal law gives the NRC broad authority to restrict the use of cesium and other radioactive materials to safeguard national security “or to protect health or to minimize danger to life or property.”The agency, however, has declined to take action to limit the irradiators, citing a low likelihood of immediate deaths or other physical harm. In doing so, the commission has looked past the mass evacuations, business closures and other economic losses that a dirty bomb could cause.Last year, a federal task force headed by the chair of the NRC concluded that no basis existed for more than voluntary incentives to encourage users to switch away from cesium irradiators.As Chair Kristine L.

Svinicki wrote in an Oct. 17, 2018, letter to President Trump, “the Task Force concluded that there are no significant gaps in radioactive source protection and security that are not already being addressed.”Svinicki declined through a spokesman to answer questions for this article, as did each of the other three sitting NRC commissioners, all of whom are appointed by the president. Burns, a former commissioner whose tenure ended on April 30, said the NRC had sought to balance public safety with the interests of the facilities using the devices, notably hospitals wary of the commission “regulating the practice of medicine.”The NRC’s stance toward regulating cesium contrasts with public warnings about radiological-weapon threats issued by every presidential administration since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.Trump, in his own 2017 National Security Strategy report, warned that the threat of a dirty bomb “is increasing.”In a series of investigative reports, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has challenged the commission’s assurances that no meaningful “gaps” exist in how cesium and other radioactive materials are secured.In 2012, a GAO report described finding a cesium irradiator on an unsecured wheeled pallet near a hospital’s loading dock. At a second facility, investigators found the combination to a lock — intended to secure a cesium irradiator — “clearly written on the door frame.”. The GAO’s most recent report, issued in April, implored the regulatory commission to act more forcefully.

Trimble, the analyst who supervised the GAO’s work, recalled that each time his staff has examined uses of cesium and other radioactive materials, “we have identified a vulnerability.”“We hope that (the) NRC will recognize the significance of the Seattle incident, and reassesses its position to not consider socioeconomic costs,” Trimble told The Times.The U.S. Department of Energy has also diverged from the NRC’s hands-off stance. The department has worked with users and manufacturers to harden the devices against theft.In 2015, the department started giving incentives to convert to safer technologies, offering to pay 100% of the expense to remove and dispose of any cesium irradiator, which typically cost up to $200,000 per unit. The department says 108 of the devices have been replaced.

Its announced goal is to “permanently eliminate” cesium irradiators by 2028.“Every irradiator that is replaced represents one fewer opportunity for a terrorist,” the department said in a report to Congress in April. A STRANGE GLOWING MATERIALEvidence of the damage cesium could cause emerged tragically in 1987 in Goiania, Brazil, an interior city about 800 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro.In September of that year, two people entered an abandoned site that had once housed a radiation-therapy clinic that utilized cesium. After prying loose some of the metal equipment, they loaded it into a wheelbarrow, hoping to sell pieces as scrap.That evening, both men began to vomit. It wasn’t until two weeks later — after the equipment and the strangely glowing material inside it had changed hands through two scrap yards and become a source of fascination for adults and children — that a local physicist persuaded authorities to take action.A monitoring station set up in a local stadium screened more than 112,000 people for possible cesium contamination. Forty-nine houses were demolished or decontaminated and about 4,500 tons of soil were hauled away, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.In the end, four people died and hundreds had to be decontaminated.Soon thereafter, the breakup of the Soviet Union increased the availability of radioactive materials at military facilities that had become neglected. As a nuclear engineer and former CIA intelligence officer, Warren Stern had traveled to the former Soviet republics, seeking to secure loose materials that could have fallen into the hands of terrorists.

11, 2001, he was uniquely positioned to warn the U.S. Government about the potential of a dirty bomb.That night, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Stern and a colleague began composing an urgent memo to their boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell, describing this new terrorist threat.In 2002, Stern joined the staff of then-U.S. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., as a nuclear advisor and persuaded her to try to force the NRC to phase cesium out of circulation and to seek tighter controls on other radioactive materials.The effort was quickly scaled back in the face of opposition from other senators. But that year, Clinton introduced a bill calling for the National Academy of Sciences to study whether any uses of radioactive materials — including cesium — could be replaced with effective and safer alternatives.In 2005, the call for a study became law, and in 2008, the National Academy’s appointed experts sent their report to the NRC and Congress. They ranked cesium as their top concern.

Cesium irradiators “should be replaced,” the 219-page report said, adding that effective and safer X-ray irradiators “are already commercially available as substitutes.”The experts directed an additional message to the NRC, saying it “should discontinue all new licensing and importation of these (cesium) sources and devices.”Users objected, citing concerns about the costs of switching and questioning whether the X-ray technology would be as effective.Among those who spoke out was Thomas M. Priselac, president and chief executive of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Without its cesium irradiator, Priselac said in an Oct.

14, 2008, letter to the NRC, Cedars might be unable to reliably irradiate high volumes of blood, possibly compromising patient safety. A Cedars spokesman declined to say whether the cesium irradiator remains in use.“What I can say is that Cedars-Sinai has strict policies and procedures in place governing the use and management of irradiation technology,” the spokesman, Duke Helfand, wrote in an email.

“This oversight has been reviewed and approved regularly by state and federal regulators.”. The NRC deferred the National Academy panel’s recommendations and called for further study.In an interview, Theodore L. Reached recently, Connell, the nuclear engineer who was a member of the committee and who had led Sandia’s studies, said any inconveniences of switching away from cesium irradiators should be weighed against the potential for harm.“We simply cannot permit a large, successful dirty bomb attack involving cesium to occur,” Connell said in an email. “There is no longer any reason to keep cesium irradiators in our hospitals and universities right in the middle of our major cities.” ‘A RISK TO PUBLIC HEALTH’From its offices in downtown Philadelphia, Avax Technologies, Inc. Was aiming to develop treatments for cancer — work that utilized a cesium irradiator.But Avax fell into financial distress and as of 2014 had “essentially ceased operation,” said Terry J.

Derstine, a radiation program manager for the Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Department. By May 2015, the company had stopped paying its rent, according to state government records.On the afternoon of May 27, Derstine’s colleagues inspected the site after learning the landlord had shut off power to Avax’s offices, which disabled door alarms intended to buttress 24-hour security for the irradiator, kept inside its own room. The irradiator “was no longer being maintained in a secure manner and was liable to theft, removal or improper usage, consequently posing a risk to public health and safety through radiation exposure,” according to a formal summary of facts, signed by Avax’s director of regulatory affairs and by Derstine and another state official.The landlord restored power to the room on the afternoon of the inspection.

In August 2015, state officials agreed to allow Avax to keep the device on condition that the company post a $200,000 bond to cover expenses if more trouble arose. Derstine and his colleagues also alerted city police and the FBI’s Philadelphia field office.The irradiator was a matter of high concern, Derstine said, because the city was preparing for the visit of Pope Francis, whose motorcade would travel along Benjamin Franklin Parkway, just two blocks from Avax’s offices.Earlier this year, Derstine told NRC commissioners that if a terrorist had set loose the cesium, “many people could have easily been exposed.”The pope’s visit went uninterrupted.

But on May 3, 2016, state officials learned that Avax “was no longer capable of continuing operations,” regulatory documents show. “Several of the security measures that were in place to protect the irradiator were in jeopardy of being terminated by the supplier for lack of payment,” Derstine told the NRC.This time, Philadelphia was preparing for a second major event — the Democratic National Convention.

Soon afterward, state officials forced the removal of the irradiator.In an interview, Henry E. Schea III, who was Avax’s regulatory affairs director and its radiation safety officer, acknowledged the company had been in “arrears in paying its rent” but said the irradiator had not been jeopardized.In interviews with The Times, Derstine recalled the ordeal, which has not previously been publicized.“Over the last 30 years,” the incident “was probably the No.

1 thing we’ve had to deal with,” he said. TINY SPILL, HUGE DISRUPTIONTechnicians confirmed the accidental release of cesium from the irradiator in central Seattle at about 9:30 p.m. On May 2.A company had been hired to remove the device, used for years in experiments on animals performed by University of Washington researchers. Across the street, at the university’s Harborview Medical Center, emergency room managers — fearing that cesium could be tracked into the hospital — initially denied entry to those needing treatment.A supervising state health physicist, Mark Henry, along with officials from the Seattle Fire Department and the National Guard, persuaded the hospital to relent. A barrier could be made from thick sheets of plastic, heavy paper and plenty of tape to protect staff and other patients, they explained.“Hospitals aren’t used to dealing with radioactive contamination,” said Mikel J.

Elsen, the Washington health department’s director of radiation protection, who commented alongside Henry and other state officials in Tumwater, Wash.The testing of all 13 individuals found their contamination levels “did not pose a health risk to any of those individuals or the general public,” according to a university medical school spokeswoman, Susan Gregg.But more than seven months later, sections of six of the seven floors of the building remain off limits because of lingering cesium. Officials believed an elevator near the breached irradiator spread the cesium with “piston-like” effect.

Once it entered the main ventilation system, they said, it scattered more widely.Hand-held instruments found cesium within the drywall and in other difficult-to-reach nooks and crannies.The heaviest concentrations were around the loading dock where the irradiator had been positioned; officials pointed to a portion of the concrete surface of an adjacent parking area that also was contaminated.The Energy Department is investigating to assess “the root cause of the accident,” according to a spokesman, Gregory A. Wolf, who said the department spent about $8.6 million for the cleanup through Sept. 30.No date has been set for when the building might be restored to its previous uses.“This has been the worst contamination event we’ve had in this state in the public domain,” said Elsen, the state health official. “And it could have been much worse, because that’s a lot of cesium if it all got out.”.