What are the dangers?

Contrary to they way they are often labeled in the press RDDs are not weapons of mass destruction. Few, if any, people would die immediately after exposure to the ionizing radiation from an RDD. However, the use of such a ‘dirty’ bomb would undoubtedly spread panic and produce severe economic damage, due to extensive cleanup difficulties.   Techniques for dealing with radioactive contamination rely largely on demolition and removal, but the long-term effects and clean-up procedures are complex as well as expensive.  There  is currently confusion and disagreement, for example, about the long-term health effects of low-level radiation. In addition, dirty bombs may contain a variety of different materials, causing unique synergistic effects that might be very difficult to understand or address.

Because it will be difficult to assess the long-term public health effects of exposure from an RDD, public health care and protection planning is very challenging. Determining publicly acceptable levels of cleanup will likely be very controversial as well.  

Fortunately, there is reason to believe that much of  the concern over dirty bombs is exaggerated.  In terms of practicality, it is much easier said than done.  To  disperse significant radioactivity over an area of, say, 1 square mile, the initial concentration within a small bomb would have to be roughly 10 million times greater and would quickly kill the terrorists trying to assemble the material.  The radioactivity also creates large amounts of heat energy sufficient to melt most containers. 

But that is not the same as saying there is no reason for concern.  For the economic and public health and safety reasons mentioned above, the security of radioactive material deserves greater attention. According to the IAEA many radioactive sources are not generally subject to tight security measures; such measures have traditionally been limited to preventing accidental access or petty theft (e.g.  of shielding materials). Traditional security measures aim to prevent unauthorized access to radioactive sources; such access is facilitated when sources are misplaced, forgotten, lost or insecurely stored.

 

Regulatory controls on sources

In the United States  the vast majority of radioactive sources are under the control of competent governmental regulatory authorities.[11] Nevertheless, there are many sources that have never been subject to regulatory control, or were initially regulated but have since been abandoned, lost, misplaced, stolen or otherwise removed without authorization; these are termed ‘orphan sources’. Because of their availability and lack of control, such orphan sources pose a risk of being used for malevolent purposes, while the modern terrorists apparent indifference to their own safety means that the risks of handling powerful radioactive sources can no longer be seen as an effective deterrent.

According to a recent report[12] by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies:

• Only a small fraction of the radioactive sources in use today pose inherently high security risks, and the great majority of these are under regulatory control in advanced countries. 
  
  
• The production of commercial radioactive sources is concentrated in a handful of countries and enterprises, creating regulatory opportunities to ensure adequate security in recipient states. 
  
  
• U.S. and Canadian export licensing rules, typical of suppliers, permit the export of most high-risk sources without any governmental review of the credentials of end-users. Pending new regulations, Canada has alerted exporters to verify the bona fides of end-users, but the U.S. has not. 

 

Legislative initiatives

Recently Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Lugar said he will reintroduce the Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism Threat Reduction Act. The bill authorizes the Secretary of State to takes measures to support international programs to detect and prevent acts of nuclear or radiological terrorism. He first introduced the bill last October with Foreign Relations ranking member Joseph Biden, D-DE., who was then committee chairman. It would provide temporary facilities in up to five countries for radioactive storage; accelerate discovery, inventory and recovery of unwanted radioactive material; replace former Soviet lighthouses, weather stations and other facilities using RTGs; provide training for radiological emergencies; require a global radiological threat assessment; develop non-radioactive alternatives to radiological uses; and appoint a special representative to coordinate U.S. efforts worldwide.

Several lawmakers, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., have introduced bills that seek to ensure that radioactive material in the United States does not fall into the wrong hands. Clinton's bill, the Dirty Bomb Prevention Act of 2003, (S. 350), which is co-sponsored by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., amends the the Atomic Energy Act of 1954  and calls for the creation of a task force chaired by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to prevent a dirty bomb attack in the United States.  Specifically, the task force is to “evaluate the security of sensitive radioactive material against security threats; and, recommend administrative and legislative actions to be taken to provide the maximum practicable degree of security against security threats.”

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., is sponsoring a similar bill  on the House side. He said there are more than 2 million radioactive sources in the United States, used for medical procedures, research, and industrial processes.  In the past 5 years, nearly 1500 radioactive sources have been reported lost or stolen in the U.S., but less than half of them have been found. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has admitted that it stopped tracking radioactive sources by serial number in 1984.[13]  

The lawmakers want the NRC to oversee a classification and tracking system for the recovery and storage of unused radioactive sources. Specifically, the bill requires the NRC to set up a task force which would recommend regulatory changes to be implemented: