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GAO Faults U.S. Effort to Secure Dirty Bomb Material
Mon June 16, 2003 06:10 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of containers of radioactive materials used in medicine, industry

and research that could be used to make crude but potentially deadly "dirty bombs" have been lost or
stolen worldwide, the General Accounting Office said on Monday.
The GAO criticized the Energy Department, which leads the U.S. effort to secure these containers, for not
having an adequate plan to help countries that pose the biggest security risks amid rising concerns the
material could fall into the hands of rogue nations or terror groups.
The GAO, Congress' investigative arm, also complained the Energy Department has spent most of the
program's money in the United States instead of to secure materials in the former Soviet Union where the
materials are concentrated.
While it said information is limited on the number of lost or stolen containers of radioactive materials
originally intended for peaceful uses, the GAO said "it is estimated to be in the thousands worldwide."
The GAO said there was a particular need to secure more than 1,000 electrical generators powered by
strontium-90, a destructive radiological material, throughout the former Soviet Union.
The Energy Department has received about $37 million since fiscal year 2002 to launch a program
to help other countries control their sealed sources, and is to get $22 million more this year.
But the GAO said the department's initial efforts "have lacked adequate planning and coordination," and
said it has not worked effectively with agencies such as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
Most of the funds have been spent in the United States, largely by the department's laboratories, instead
of in the former Soviet Union, it said.
Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, top Democrat on the Governmental Affairs subcommittee on international
security and proliferation, said the report showed that "there is a worldwide crisis in tracking and securing"
the containers, and said the Energy Department "needs to work much harder to make sure U.S.
assistance goes overseas where it's needed."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/06/16/nuclear.georgia.reut/
CNN Dirty bomb parts found in Tbilisi Monday, June 16, 2003 Posted: 1:45 PM EDT (1745 GMT)
TBILISI, Georgia (Reuters) -- Georgian authorities have found highly radioactive material that could be
used in a "dirty" bomb and a container of lethal Mustard Gas in a taxi in the capital Tbilisi, police said
Monday.
Police searched the taxi on May 31 and found two metal boxes stuffed with radioactive by-products of
nuclear fission, Cesium-137 and Strontium-90. One container, inscribed in Russian and English, weighed
at least 170 lb.
A separate container had Mustard Gas, or Yperite, an odorless chemical used in World War I and which
can be lethal in small quantities.
"The most likely version is that the containers were intended to be transported on to Turkey and to be
resold," police spokesman Givi Mgebrishvili told a news conference.
Mgebrishvili said police found the material during a routine raid in a Tbilisi suburb.
The taxi driver was unaware of his dangerous cargo and has been released. Two suspects are in police
custody, accused of trying to take the material to the former Soviet state's Adzhara autonomous republic
on the border with Turkey.
"A dirty bomb could be easily made from these substances," said Leri Meskhi, a nuclear expert at Tbilisi
University.
In March, the United Nations nuclear watchdog called for stricter international security measures to keep
radioactive material out of the hands of terrorists, who could use it to wreak havoc with dirty bombs.
A dirty bomb combines conventional explosives with radioactive material. It may not cause more
casualties than a conventional blast, but the threat of radioactive contamination could create widespread
panic.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, nuclear materials once under Moscow's control have
turned up in many of its former republics and beyond.
In one of the most serious incidents, three men were arrested at Munich airport in Germany in 1994
carrying 12 ounces of Russian weapons-grade plutonium.