Dirty Bomb Called 'All but Inevitable'
Sunday, September 5, 2004
A flood of radioactive sources, from discarded cancer treatment machines advertised on the Internet to misplaced industrial gadgets that turn up in junkyards, have yet to be corralled by U.S. authorities three years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, experts say -- and could easily be exploited by terrorists seeking to make a dirty bomb.
The material is so abundant and easy to obtain, the experts say, that it is almost inevitable that a U.S. city will be the target of a bomb salted with radioactive waste.
And if a terrorist attaches ordinary chemical explosives to stolen radioactive sources, then detonates the bomb in or over a city -- spreading a "hot" plume over a huge urban area -- the consequences could be devastating.
Despite valiant efforts by emergency preparedness and military agencies to prepare for such an attack -- including a simulated dirty bomb "attack" in Los Angeles on Aug. 5-6 -- a real-life, devastating attack could cause property losses far in excess of Sept. 11 and have unforeseeable health effects, analysts warn.
The list of woe includes:
-- "There are more than 2 million radioactive sources in the U.S. (that are) used for medical procedures, research and industrial processes," noted Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., in a statement late last year. "In the past five years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported that nearly 1,500 radioactive sources have been reported lost or stolen in the U.S., but less than half of them have been found."
-- The Internet provides a potential route for the irresponsible to obtain deadly radioactive sources, Markey warned in mid-August. As an example of what he called the "atomic EBay," he cited a recent online offer by a hospital in Beirut to give away -- for free -- a used cancer therapy machine, containing a highly radioactive cobalt-60 source, to anyone who would pay to remove it.
-- Because radioactive grains can "chemically bind to asphalt, concrete and glass," in the words of Jaime M. Yassif of the Federation of American Scientists, some cleanups might require the use of exotic new tools such as concrete-eating bacteria. Just locating all contaminants could be nearly impossible, given the ease with which they're absorbed by soil and disappear into cracks in wood and pavement.
"In a recent and very realistic Swedish exercise using instruments in cars, trucks and aircraft to search for concealed (radioactive) sources, only about half of the sources were found by any given team, and some sources were not found by any of the search teams," write physicist Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Cheryl Loeb, research associate at National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., in the January issue of Defense Horizons.
While there's disagreement over how many people would be killed in a dirty bomb assault -- perhaps thousands, perhaps a few, perhaps nobody if people evacuated quickly enough to safe sites where they could remove contaminated clothing, then shower -- the economic impact could be cataclysmic. .
The long-term health issues are difficult to assess.
For many decades, experts have fiercely debated radioactivity's lasting effect on the human body. Some experts believe that radioactivity below a certain intensity isn't dangerous, and say the public is overly scared of low- level radioactive sources; others say there is no safe level of radiation. But plenty of high-level radionuclides are used in medical, industrial and research facilities -- and, if procured by terrorists, would make a devastating dirty bomb.
A cancer therapy machine with a cobalt-60 source might have thousands of curies, the unit used to measure radiation. Yet even "a 100-curie source (is) extremely dangerous," Zimmerman and Loeb note.
Given the uncertainty about health effects, some experts regard a dirty bomb as being, first and foremost, a psychological weapon, one that sparks mass hysteria and social disruption -- even if the fear isn't necessarily justified by a specific attack.
Mind you, the news isn't all bad.
Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, federal authorities have made progress toward rounding up radioactive sources. In May, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced that the Department of Energy "surpassed a congressional target of recovering and securing 5,000 radioactive sources domestically within an 18-month time period." Hospitals are trying to minimize their reliance on radioactive sources for therapy, diagnosis and research.
At UCSF, the amount of radioactive medical waste generated annually plunged from 11,000 cubic feet per year in 1992 to 2,280 cubic feet in 2003, said Ara Tahmassian, associate vice chancellor for research.
One reason is the development of highly sensitive devices for measuring trace amounts of radioactivity injected into the body or used in research.
In a typical experiment, Tahmassian noted, "we were using milliliters (of chemicals) and now we're using microliters" -- a thousandfold difference. In the last five years or so, the drop in waste has relieved the once-worrisome pressure on UCSF's limited storage facilities for radioactive waste. After such waste decays to a safe level, it is shipped to a low-level radioactive waste site in Utah.
Also, the number of U.S. cancer radiation therapy machines that use radioactive sources has fallen from more than 1,000 to about 100 since the 1970s because of the development of alternatives such as particle accelerators, said Charles D. Ferguson, a science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.
On another front, the U.S. steel industry has lessened its reliance on radiation-equipped gadgets that were once routinely used to check the integrity of welds. Many years ago, these radiation sources occasionally fell into molten vats. If not recovered, some ended up in steel scrap yards, where no one realized how "hot" they were.
Despite such improvements, the threat of a dirty bomb attack remains ominous.
"I don't want to fan hysteria but ... a dirty bomb attack is all but inevitable in the coming years," Ferguson said in an interview.
Ferguson has struggled for the last three years to prevent such a disaster. He was a foreign affairs officer at the U.S. State Department on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon. His boss ordered him: "Charles, I want you to start drafting a memo to Secretary (of State Colin) Powell -- we need to get his attention on the dirty bomb issue."
Another leading anti-dirty bomb activist is Rep. Markey of Massachusetts, who frequently assails what he views as the nation's -- and in particular the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's -- sluggish pace in preparing for such a catastrophe.
"FedEx and Lands' End seem to do a better job at tracking clothing purchases," Markey has said, "than the NRC does at tracking radioactive materials."
A RISK NO INSURER WILL COVER
When it comes to a dirty bomb attack, the nation's Achilles' heel might be its lack of insurance coverage for such a disaster.
The U.S. insurance industry refuses to provide coverage for a dirty bomb attack. The potential property loss could "be worth more than the industry would be able to pay, it's as simple as that," says Pete Moraga of the Insurance Information Network of California, a trade association.
"Even with business interruption insurance, a wave of bankruptcies is likely to follow (a dirty bomb attack), unless the government steps in and offers subsidies to everyone from business operators to owners of buildings to mortgage holders," write physicist Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Cheryl Loeb, a research associate at National Defense University's Center for Technology and National Security Policy, in the January issue of Defense Horizons.
They point out that the post-Sept. 11 economic recovery of lower Manhattan cost up to $40 billion, and "the consequences of a large or super RDD (radiological dispersion device, a.k.a. dirty bomb) might well be more costly."
They urge that the federal government "provide some form of national insurance against radiological terrorism," akin to federally subsidized flood insurance.
Even Lloyd's of London, famed for its willingness to insure offbeat risks -- such as the capture of the Loch Ness monster -- isn't daring to insure property owners against dirty bombs.
As Neil Smith of Lloyd's Market Association told The Chronicle:
"The insurance industry worldwide, to all intents and purposes, concluded many years ago that the scale of disaster that could be caused by radioactive materials was such that any such event could not be dealt with by conventional insurance."
