H/T to Ed Morrissey, the Canadian press has compiled a catalog of missing radioactive sources.

Radioactive devices — some of which have the potential to be used in terrorist attacks — have gone missing in alarming numbers in Canada over the past five years.

A new database compiled by The Canadian Press shows that the devices, which are used in everything from medical research to measuring oil wells, are becoming a favoured target of thieves.

At least 76 have gone missing in Canada over the past five years — disappearing from construction sites, specialized tool boxes, and generally growing legs and walking away.

Some of the devices could be used in a “dirty bomb,” where conventional explosives are used to detonate nuclear material, spreading the contamination over a wide area, said Alan Bell, a security and international terrorism expert from Globe Risk Security Holdings.

He told CTV Newsnet on Thursday that the problem isn’t new, but it has gained new attention as a result of the CP report.

“It’s come to the fore over the last couple of days but it has always been there. We’ve had this problem. It’s only a matter of time before terrorists use a dirty bomb process to attack the world,” Bell said.

The database compiled by CP tracks the rate at which the devices have gone missing in recent years.

It points to dozens of cases where hazardous materials have gone missing, been stolen or lost in a variety of mishaps.

Of the 76, 35 were stolen, three others were found in a ditch beside a road, in a dump and in a farmer’s field.

Dozens were still unaccounted for at last count.

Bell said there is a lack of streamlining among the different federal departments responsible for nuclear materials and a single agency should be set up to track the transportation of nuclear materials.

“But one of the biggest problems is yes, we do keep track of them to the best of our ability, but things fall through the cracks as they always do,” Bell said.

The CP report comes in the wake of the release of a federal study that said the detonation of a small dirty bomb near Toronto’s CN Tower would send radiation out over a four kilometre area, causing economic devastation and slamming the city’s emergency medical services.

Bell said such reports could actually help motivate terrorists to strike the city.

“I was surprised. Why tell the terrorists where to place the device? This is the ramifications of the weather, this is the area that’s contaminated or affected. I thought it was irresponsible to do that.”

For the benefit of the reader, the radioactive sources to which the report refers come from commercial applications such as medical uses (PET scans, radioactive tracers), radiography (of industrial welds with Co-60, etc.), and other fairly large scale industrial uses.  Mr. Bell’s concern about informing the terrorists of the best tactics is irrelevant.  The terrorists already know that atmospheric dispersion is important.  The communication of basic science in the media doesn’t constitute assistance to terrorists.  However, lack of control over radioactive sources does, and we might point out that the number of sources discussed in this report is very small compared to that existing in the U.S.  Amelioration of missing or stray sources has been an issue in the U.S. for some time, and there has been a concerted recovery effort over the past months.

Under the NNSA’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), excess, unwanted, or abandoned radioactive sealed sources and other radioactive material are recovered and secured by Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL’s) Off-site Source Recovery Project (OSRP) from commercial firms and academic institutions. Sources containing radioactive plutonium, americium, californium, caesium, cobalt, iridium, radium, and strontium have been recovered from medical, educational, agricultural, research and industrial facilities throughout the USA.

Radioactive sealed sources packaged by NNSA’s OSRP include more than 15,000 curies of americium-241, 10,000 curies of plutonium-238, and 10,000 grams of plutonium-239, collected from more than 600 sites. The sealed sources were once used in applications ranging from nuclear-powered cardiac pacemakers to gauges used in the manufacture of paper.

The aim of the GTRI program is to remove and securely manage radioactive materials that could be at risk of theft or used in a radiological dispersal device (’dirty bomb’).

The OSRP was initiated by the DoE in 1999 as an environmental management project to recover and dispose of excess and unwanted sealed radioactive sources. The NNSA was established by Congress in 2000 as a separately organized agency within the DoE responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science. The OSRP was transferred to NNSA’s Office of Global Threat Reduction in 2003. In 2006, OSRP also began recovering unwanted or unused US-origin sealed sources distributed overseas.

Russia is planning on consolidating control over radioactive materials for the same reason that the U.S. has already been on this quest for recovery of sources, i.e., prevention of nuclear terrorism.  Russia is planning on this central authority also having responsibility for control over “special nuclear materials,” or fissile material (already under extremely strict controls in the U.S.).

None of the controls discussed above, whether U.S. or Russian, pertain to small radioactive sources such as calibration sources, “button” sources, etc.  For instance, if you pull your smoke detector down and read the back panel, you will see that it contains 1 microCurie of Am-241 (Americium 241).  Such sources are too small to warrant control, although they are widely distributed and readily available.

Use and effectiveness of such a device is subject to atmospheric conditions, amount of radioactive material, emergency actions such as evacuation, and other things not under the control of the terrorists.  The terrorists will also consider use of such a device in a confined area such as a subway.  The discussing of this tactic here is not tantamount to divulging operational security to the enemy.  The enemy already knows it.

The solution to this kind of terrorism lies in prevention.  First, the terrorists themselves must be found out, and second, radioactive sources must be controlled.  Finally, an effective emergency response must be fielded and an information campaign must inform the public as to the precise consequences of such an event (both projected and actual).  It is likely that the consequences will redound more to public fear and reaction than to real health effects.