Ridiculous Uranium Scare in Moldova Gets Internatonal Attention
August 25th, 2010
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This is the kind of ignroance-based story that drives me nuts:
3 arrested in Moldova in uranium smuggling plot
CHISINAU, Moldova — Two former policemen and another person were arrested in Moldova on suspicion of trying to sell four pounds (nearly two kilograms) of uranium on the black market, authorities said Wednesday, although the amount was too small to be used in a nuclear warhead or a “dirty bomb.”Officials identified the material as uranium-238 and said it had a value of euro9 million ($11.35 million).
Uranium-238 can be enriched into the fissile material of nuclear warheads or converted into plutonium, also used to arm nuclear missiles. Both processes are complex and need much more of the material than the amount reported seized, which also was much too little to be used for a “dirty bomb.”
Interior Ministry officials said the traffickers were trying to sell the uranium, which was kept in the garage of a former policeman, to people from unspecified countries.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner congratulated Moldova’s government for the break up of what he called a uranium smuggling ring and said an FBI team had assisted Moldovan authorities with “technical analysis.”
Moldovan authorities have sent the uranium to a German atomic center to establish the percentage of enrichment and country of origin.
The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna declined immediate comment on the case.
“We congratulate the Moldovan Ministry of Interior for its work in thwarting what was a serious smuggling attempt,” Toner told reporters in Washington. “Preventing nuclear smuggling is a priority for this administration, and the U.S. government continues to work with partners worldwide to thwart nuclear smuggling cases.”
I’m really stunned to see such fear and ignorance-based responses at the highest levels of the government. “serious smuggling attempt”??? Where the hell does this come from?
Also, where the hell do they get the value of $11.35 million from? I am assuming the value of the uranium is an error on the part of the Associated Press, or possibly based on the price that the “criminals” were asking for the uranium, which was reported to be about nine million Euro. Honestly, if anyone is willing to pay that much, they’re an idiot and getting hosed badly, because I can get you that much U-238 for considerably less. In any case, that may be the asking price, but it sure as hell is not the “value.”
The reports (and there are many) are not entirely clear on whether this is natural or depleted uranium. Both natural and depleted uranium are composed primarily of U-238. In the case of natural uranium it’s about 99.3% U-238, with most of the remaining being U-235. Depleted Uranium is less than .3% U-235. The article mentions that the uranium could be enriched (although you would get very little enriched uranium from two kilograms of unenriched uranium.) That would seem to imply it is natural, although depleted uranium is sometimes suitable for “re-enrichment” to recover that remaining .3% or less of U-235.
I believe the uranium is most likely of the depleted variety. This photo was published in several news outlets and reports to show the uranium in question. It appears to be some kind of counter-weight or possibly a plug from a shielded cask – both of these being common uses of depleted uranium. The source of the uranium is unknown, but it may have been scavenged from a junked aircraft or from a scrap metal yard.
So is this dangerous?
Absolutely, unequivocally and unquestionably NO. It’s not dangerous – at least no more so than a chunk of lead of equal size. You could possibly drop it on someone’s head, but that’s about the worst you could do with this uranium.
Despite numerous published reports claiming that this could be used in a so-called “dirty bomb,” it presents negligible radiation danger. For a dirty bomb to have any potential at all for radioactive hazard, it would have to use large amounts of something much more potent than U-238. Cobalt-60 or Cesium-137 might do the trick (if you had a real real lot of it), but even then, the effectiveness is questionable. That, however, is another topic entirely. In any case, the potential for using this in a dirty bomb is zero.
Is it a even crime?
I have to admit that I’m not an expert on the laws in Moldova, but unless this item was stolen outright then I don’t even see why this would be considered a crime. The material itself is not especially hazardous. It’s less radioactive than high grade uranium ore, which can be found just laying on the ground in many places in the world. It’s less toxic than lead. It’s not really suitable for any kind of “terrorist” use.
In most circumstances, depleted uranium is not regarded as a material that requires much regulation for radiological hazard. In the United States, for example, any person may possess, transfer, buy or sell up to fifteen pounds (a little less than 8 kilograms) of depleted uranium with no need for a license or permit of any kind. Larger quantities may be subject to regulation, depending on the circumstances. In general, uranium found in consumer products that are either approved or pre-date current regulations are exempt from permit requirements. Approved counterweights, instrument shielding and other products manufactured within applicable regulations are generally also exempt. Of course, uranium in its mineral form is not covered by nuclear materials regulations.
However, the NRC and Federal Government does have the right to seize radioactive substances, even those which are not generally subject to regulations, if they are deemed a hazard. There are certainly circumstances where this might be necessary – for example, if a huge number of radium clocks and aircraft dials are being improperly disposed of, it may be necessary to step in and take action, even though these items would normally be exempt from regulation by virtue of the fact that they are consumer products that predate the current regulatory framework.
Unfortunately, this kind of breathtakingly idiotic panic and fear-mongering can be a very dangerous thing when combined with fact that the government can seize items deemed dangerous. This is the exact kind of idiocy that can lead to large areas being cordoned off when a small piece of depleted uranium is found or to hazmat teams raiding homes to confiscate Fiestaware plates or antique Vaseline glass sculptures.
While I do not know what the regulations are outside the US, I’d assume that they are probably similar. Most countries maintain the right to declare items or areas to be hazardous. Uranium is not generally regulated as highly radioactive substances of other types are – if it were, many common rocks and minerals would be illegal – not to menti0n the products ranging from aircraft counterweights to glazed pottery.
Is it so outlandish that authorities could be spooked by reports of uranium-glazed china to swoop in and declare their efforts a “raid against terrorist material?” Well, the US State Department seems to think that a tiny amount of U-238 is reason to dispatch a “technical assistance” team to another country, and we live in a society where schools are closed down and cordoned off because someone broke a mercury thermometer and where major universities worry about radioactivity in buildings which, nearly a century ago, stored polonium-210, which has a half-life of 138 days.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Depleted Cranium, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 25th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Yeah, I read about this on the BBC website and was astounded by the stupidity in the reporting. The real howler was the following:
Well, I suppose that the U-238 could be used to downblend weapons-grade uranium to be used in the “civilian nuclear industry,” and if anti-armor DU ordinance counts as “weapons of mass destruction” then the BBC might have a point.
However, I don’t think that this reporter had this in mind when he included this idiotic statement.
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August 25th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Looks like a trim weight from an aircraft. These have the same profile, but usually have a steel cable looped through the center hole. Looks like the idiots probably cracked it trying to take the cable out. The units are generally cadmium plated to stop oxidation.
These weights are used on Airbus products, and are depleted uranium – pure, non-fissile U238 – valueless as a source.
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August 25th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
BMS said:
More like “Upblended” – the only value of depleted uranium in terms of making fuel through blending is that it’s used to reduce enrichment. You add a little bit of highly enriched uranium to a larger amount of depleted uranium and you end up with low enrichment uranium.
Of course, it *could* be used in a nuclear weapon in some circumstances. Many Teller-Ulum bombs used DU for the outer tamper. It could also be used as feedstock to breed plutonium. Of course, both of these are pretty far fetched for a terror group, as you need a complete nuclear weapons program first. Yet the media has decided to focus a lot on this – ridiculous though it might be.
It’s all just so stupid. You can get depleted uranium if you really want it. It’s sold in small samples as a calibration source. If you need more, here is just one company that can provide it: http://www.mfgsci.com/index.html
These trim weights show up pretty frequently in aircraft scrap yards.
DV82XL said:
I’m less dumbfounded by the idiocy of the guys who found this thing and tried to sell it than I am the governmental response. Then again, it is likely as much the politics of fear and promoting idiocy as it is the actual officials being as stupid as they seem. I don’t know – maybe a bit of both.
The reporting on this could not be worse.
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August 25th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
FTA: “The material was not enriched and could not have been used in a nuclear weapon, but it was sufficient to have been turned into a devastating dirty bomb, a nuclear expert with Greenpeace said today.”
Since when did Greenpeace have “nuclear experts”?
That said, what in a slug of DU or NU can be turned into a dirty bomb? Do you just powder it and pack it with conventional explosives, basically contaminating a hundred foot radius with the equivalent of light radon gassing and leaded water? Has anyone yet built such a bomb?
“Uranium-238 can be enriched into the fissile material of nuclear warheads…”
1.8 kg of NU would yield about 15g of 235-U if enriched to weapons grade. For comparison, the minimum critical mass of 99.99% 235-U is about 56kg.
“… or converted into plutonium, also used to arm nuclear missiles”
Not unless you already have a fission source, and a mechanism by which to expose slugs of 238-U quickly. Then you’ll need to extract the part per million or so from the slugs. Obviously, you’ll need a specialized reactor the like that few governments have. Using this little fear item is less than stupid.
“‘I don’t understand why the price was so high if this was unenriched uranium,’ Blokov said. ‘Nine million euros is a lot.’”
Because, “expert”, these guys were (stupidly) trying to run a scam.
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August 25th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Bryan Elliott said:
Not that I’m aware of. I should add that it’s actually fairly difficult to effeciently distribute a powder by explosive. It can be done, but unless the design is sophisticated and the powder properly sized and distributed, only a small portion of it is well distributed.
Uranium would be harmless in such a device. If you had something much much more potent, well, maybe you could give some people mild radiation poisoning. It would all depend on those in the area getting the stuff off of them quickly or not. Lets say, for example, I set off an explosive filled with Cs-137 and you get covered with a fine powder of cs-137. Now if you just stay like that, you could get a fatal dose. if you take off your outer layer of clothes, brush your self immediately and then get hosed down – well, you’re probably okay then. Maybe some mild beta burns. That’s about it.
But let me stress again, the very act of getting the powder dispersed so it covers everyone is a surprisingly difficult task. All and all, a dirty bomb would be a huge amount of effort for a relatively small amount of deaths and injuries.
But I’m getting off topic… Even if we play devils advocate and assume a large radiological dispersal device in an enclosed and crowded area, uranium is useless for this.
If such a device were ever used, my only fear would be the shrapnel and the actual explosive itself.
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August 26th, 2010 at 4:37 am
Just wait until they notice you build a H-bomb with enough water…
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August 26th, 2010 at 5:29 am
Just in case you ever need to find out the price of natural uranium, which actually has quite a bit more valuable U-235 in it than depleted U, which has had some U-235 removed, you can visit UxC Consulting’s web page. They post their estimate of the current price based on latest trades right on the front page.
http://www.uxc.com/
The current price of U3O8, which is 85% natural uranium, is $46 per pound. That yields a uranium price of $54 per pound. Four pounds of that material would thus be worth $216, which is just a tiny bit less than the $11.35 MILLION quoted by the AP.
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August 26th, 2010 at 6:11 am
If the idiot buyers they allegedly had contact with would contact me instead, I can supply you with as much U-238 as you could possibly carry, and for the reasonable price of 4.5 million Euros per kilo. Deal?
No, Greenpeace don’t have any nuclear experts, expert scare mongers possibly or experts in tresspassing with criminal intent. The fact that GP has not been put on the terrorist watch list is anyones guess as their funding does come from some rather dubious sources. Not to mention that the original founders of the organisation have left it due to it becoming too radicalised. Democracy within the organisation is also conspicously abscent…
*I was a member once, when I was young and stupid.*
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August 26th, 2010 at 10:57 am
drbuzz0 said:
Totally agree. The panic caused by fearmongering idiots would far outweigh the actual damage. “OMG! RADIATION!!!!!”
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August 26th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
For those not familiar with the issue of enrichment and re-enrichment:
Natural uranium has about .7% U-235, which is what is concentrated by enrichment. “depleted uranium” has much less – usually something like .1% or even less. Basically, all the U-235 worth recovering has been removed.
There are some circumstances where depleted uranium might be worth “re-enriching” – that is to say, it has enough U-235 left in it to make it worthwhile to extract some of the remainder. This might be the case if you’re talking about uranium enriched by an older gaseous diffusion system. If the original enrichment was not very efficient it may have as much as .3% U-235 left in it, which could be worth recovery.
However, in most cases, there’s not enough U-235 left to make it worthwhile, and even when there is, it’s still much less productive than natural uranium.
Another thing to point out: It’s almost never worth the effort to re-enrich depleted uranium metal. Most DU that’s worth re-enriching is in the form of depleted uranium hexaflouride. In this circumstance, it’s easier to enrich because no chemical conversion is necessary. To re-enrich metal you’d have to reflouridate it and possibly remove any alloying metals or impurities. Considering most of the U-235 is gone, it’s just not worth the trouble to get the tiny bit left.
While Rod Adams is right about the price of natural uranium, if this is depleted (which it looks like) it’s basically worthless or nearly so.
They have a whole bunch of these counterweights at places like the Mojave Airport/industrial air park.
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August 26th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Matte said:
They should have let the sale go through. What better way to disable terrorists than let them completely deplete their financial resources buying stuff that is basically useless as a weapon.
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August 26th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
It is interesting that the crime was exaggerated, at least according to this article, by Toner and not by Moldovan authorities. For all I can tell, the State Department was doing a little fear-mongering because it wants to avoid protests in case it decides to attack a particular Middle Eastern country to which uranium has been provided. Wonderful side-effect, though: “Oh Noes! Smuggling four-syllable science-y-sounding stuff ending in “ium”! Radiation! Fear the lump of scrap metal. Fear it!”
It is also no wonder that the uranium was confiscated. Smuggling is smuggling, whether it is depleted uranium or Beanie-Babies.
At least they weren’t smuggling Beanie-Babium. Five syllables. Definitely more dangerous.
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August 26th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
As a licence fee payer, I must admit that I am ashamed of the BBC. By way of recompense, I will tell you an amusing story told to me by a colleague.
A generation of British potters had grown up not having had the opportunity to use uranium oxide because the government had taken all the available supplies. Eventually this person was able to acquire a jar of depleted uranium oxide. He put in his briefcase which he then left on a bus.
This jar was, for some unfathomable reason, marked, ‘Warning – this substance is not of normal isotopic composition.’
When he went to the bus depot to collect it, he found that his briefcase had been placed on the garage floor, covered with a sheet of plastic, and a large circle had been chalked around it.
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August 26th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Matthew said:
You know what? No one would be able to tell if someone use this stuff to try and make a radiation dispersal bomb.
First, the damned stuff would most likely burst into flame, if some fool tried to grind it up. At best, even it you were successful, you would be left with a few kilos of oxide. Packed around a bit of plastique, and exploded it would surely disperse alright – right into the NORM background.
That’s why the anti DU types can’t find a major increase in background radiation on battlefields that had DU based ordinance fired during the action: U238 is just not radioactive enough to show up without using very specialized equipment.
Again this shows that so-called ‘dirty bombs’ are nothing more than a figment of the media’s imagination.
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August 26th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
DV82XL said:
Fair enough – I’ve always maintained that anyone building a scare bomb would be better off robbing a hospital or radiology clinic for isotopes to put in, anyway. Far more radioactive (and after the first time it shows up on a geiger counter, everyone will assume the area is poisoned forever, even though the stuff will be gone within a few months)
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August 26th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Matthew said:
Not that these medical isotopes haven’t gone missing on more occasions than they should, but the very fact that a caesium-137, or cobalt-60 sources have a very hard spectrum makes processing them into a form suitable for use in an effective Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) a suicidal activity for a sub-national group.
Again, the major nuclear powers looked into RDD ordinance in the Fifties, and determined then it was not worth developing as a weapon, or even forming a general defense against, they were so ineffective.
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August 26th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
A little off topic but since the discussion hsa wandered into the general area.
The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html
Seems half-lives may not be quite as constant as we always thought.
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August 26th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
DV82XL said:
I’m not arguing that such weapons would be particularly dangerous or militarily useful (aside from having an explosion in a presumably populated area). The only real effect would be caused by the stampeding morons who would be certain it was a boom of doom. Even the hospital ones wouldn’t eb all that useful, except they’re more likely to trip detection equipment, and thus set of panic attacks.
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August 26th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Matthew said:
Well, first of all, I don’t think that the hardcore Al Queda and Islamic militant terrorists are really so interested in scaring as they are killing. A device that scares a city is less desirable that one that kills 50 infidels. They want carnage – not merely fear.
HOWEVER, if I were part of a group that wanted to use a “dirty bomb” to cause fear I would not set one off. I might put together a small explosive surrounded by a radioactive material and leave it somewhere where it would be found before it went off or I might even intentionally make it a dud.
The reason is this: If it actually goes off it does little or no harm. If it is stopped then you get rampant speculation of what the damage would be. The idiot politicians and police chiefs would talk about how “By the grace of god we dodged a bullet on this one because if it had gone off, thousands would no doubt be dead.” the media would hype it. Bureaucrats would all talk about how this proves how dangerous the terrorists are “They might have more of these! What if the next one is not stopped before detonating?!??!?! We need billions more in funding or the next one could kill hundreds.. no thousands… no MILLIONS”
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August 26th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Remember, to the ignorant, all uranium is a kind of radioactive nitroglycerin. Small amounts give you cancer, and large amounts go all thermonuclear boom when hit hard enough.
And if you try to set them straight, for some reason they get mad at you.
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August 26th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Matthew said:
I know that this is the current wisdom on this issue, but, (and not to criticizes you personally) I have yet to see anything other than assumptions on this matter, none of which have been backed up by any research. The thing is there HAVE been what the nuclear safety crowd referrers to as ‘major loss of containment events’, where sources have gone missing, or radioactive scrap has found its was into various goods, and panic did not happen as a result.
In one famous case up here in Canada, radioactive scrap found its way into restaurant furniture, that was sold to a place in Winnipeg Man., in the aftermath of the Juarez accident in 1983. The real Atomic Cafe, as it was called locally, did not cause widespread panic, the offending items where removed to Whiteshell for disposal, and every one forgot it in a few days. There have been other similar cases, and the public, seems to take it in stride.
It is my suspicion that one of these would be a total wet firecracker, and would not be worth the trouble.
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August 26th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
ddp said:
I read some things about this. It all seems to have started with some observations of the decay rate of of silicon-32 being measured at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
I was going to write about it some time ago but I couldn’t find the original data in a detailed enough format.
Anyway, I have a much different explanation. My hypothesis is that the detection rate is being influenced by atmospheric conditions. This would be things like temperature, barometric pressure and humidity.
Lets say you have a sample of a radioactive material and you have a detector near it. The radiation from the sample travels a few inches to the detector. On the way, some of it is absorbed by the atmosphere. Alpha and beta particles collide with air molecules and never reach the detector. Even gamma photons are slightly attenuated by the atmosphere.
Eventhough the decay rate stays the same, lower barometric pressure, higher humidity and higher temperatures all result in lower density of air. If you measure the rate precisely enough this influence of the atmosphere would come into play.
When I looked at the data from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, something was very noticeable. The decay rates tended to oscillate with seasons – higher in summer and lower in winter. This was attributed to distance from the sun. However, something else stood out. There were a couple of anomalous years – years where the cycle seemed to be upset or didn’t fit as well.
Take a look at this data:
http://www.sott.net/image/image/13622/full/halflife_graph3_zoom.jpg
What years stick out?
Would it surprise you if I told you that 1998 was one of the most extreme “El Nino” years in recent history and the summer of 1998 was unusually mild in the Northeastern US and had unseasonable precipitation distribution? This actually began in 1997 causing the 1997 to 1998 seasons to have abnormal conditions
Would you be surprised to also find out that 1987 also stands out as a year with anomalous weather?
Now this likely would not be a perfect match for the weather because these samples are measured indoors, so it will also have to do with how the weather is responded to – whether the heating system is turned on, the air conditioning turned on or windows are kept open or closed.
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August 26th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
drbuzz0 said:
I’ve had a few thoughts on that, especially with the foiled plane bombings over the last couple of years (eg. Richard Reid) whch were pretty incompetent, compared to the Al Qs’ known capabilities. ((dons tinfoil hat))
The damage they cause, economically, is probably worse than if they had succeeded. I’m rememberin g a stat I came across a few years ago, where an extra 30 min wait at the airport was on the order of a $10B annual economic hit (5B? 15B? – has anyone else seen it and remember?). If a plane blows up and we have no idea what happened, it hurts, but the “shoes off, belt off, check for water” bits at airports aggregate up to a decent chunk of damage over time. Given that we *know* they can do better than this, it almost makes me wonder if these were planned failures.
It would be pretty smart and sophisticated, but they’re a bunch of crazies, not idiots.
(((removes tinfoil hat))
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August 29th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
ddp said:
Heavy nuclei become less stable as you increase the number of nucleons or change the ratio between protons and neutrons. The stability tends to drop quickly as you move away from the ratio of maximum stability. Beta-decay is a slow process, mediated by the Weak nuclear force, by which a neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and an anti-neutrino. Such a 1 -> 3 decay is heavily supporessed by the difference between the total available energy and the mass of the W boson. However, you can induce Beta-decay hitting the neutron with a high-energy neutrino, bringing the total available energy a lot closer to the mass of the W boson and getting rid of that suppression.
The article says that neutrinos essentially don’t interact with anything because they only interact weakly, but that is not quite true: They interact Weakly, as in, through the Weak nuclear force, with W and Z bosons (which would be about 13 times stronger than the electromagnetic force without that suppression). Inducing Beta decay would then make the nucleus far less stable and drive fission.
Temperature can also affect decays, so I suspect anyone taking precision-measurements would do so in a strongly climate-controlled environment. It would be worth checking the random number-generators against precision-measurements should tell us whether it is Beta decay or instrumental effects. It should be noted that 1988 and 1998 were each immediately before massive peaks in solar activity. I don’t recall off the top of my head the travel-time for a photon from the core to the surface of the sun, but due to the sheer number of interactions (which neutrinos do not see), I think those neutrinos could have been from the same reactions that drove the following peaks.
On a separate note, I suspect the RDD bombs were abandoned because they could drive escalation without immediately affecting the enemy’s ability to escalate. Imagine a Cold War nuclear weapon (RDD, not fission/fusion-bomb, but who would care?) which contributes absolutely nothing towards First Strike capability. It’s especially bad if it is subtle enough that an accident or fluke could convince the other side that you used it. The thing would be worse than useless to have sitting around, but that says nothing about its potential efficacy in rendering the blast-radius uninhabitable (with sufficiently large quantities of radioactive material).
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August 29th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Stephen said:
They were abandoned because they just didn’t work. There was more radioactive material spread by some fire tests on bomb cores that were done about the same time. The consensus was that these represented no threat that needed defending against, and were militarily useless both as a strike weapon or as area denial ordinance. Given some of the bizarre weapon systems that got developed long past the point where they had proven worthless in that era, the fact that this idea was unceremoniously dropped speaks volumes.
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August 30th, 2010 at 6:29 am
Alan Barnard said:
They’d probably made a magic circle to keep the radiation demons controlled…
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August 30th, 2010 at 9:28 am
An RDD is totally ineffective in most circumstances. It might have some potential if you could get a real lot of a very radioactive substance and set it off in an enclosed area. That would be one of the keys – an enclosed area like a crowded restaurant or something. Outdoors = useless.
Even inside though, worst case is some people get beta burns and mild radiation poisoning. Assuming they are decontaminated in relatively short order, nobody dies.
There’s another problem, that makes it very impractical. You would need a very radioactive substance and a real lot of it. That’s an issue for several reasons. Highly radioactive substances are, by definition, short lived. The fact that the half-life is short causes practical problems in how you’d manage to accumulate enough material and get it to the location in time. Radioisotopes with very short half-lives are not available in large quantities and they don’t go “orphaned” because they decay away before they can be lost.
If you go with something like Cs-137, which has a long enough half-life that it can possibly be stolen or something, well, then you need a much larger quantity. This makes your device bigger. It is made even more heavy by the need to shield it, or you could never transport it and set it off.
Not to mention the other issue of the fact that handling and assembling a device composed of multiple kilograms of Cs-137 is no easy thing. It pretty much should be done in an underwater hotcell using manipulators to handle the substance. It generates significant heat for one thing, but the gamma radiation is the big thing. It’s basically suicidal to try to assemble it into a bomb without proper equipment.
It’s just not credible as a threat. You put this in a crowded cafe and you’d do less damage than if you replaced the radioactive substances and shielding with more explosives.
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September 5th, 2010 at 11:27 am
Wow…you people are smart! If I hang out here more often, I will learn something. ;o} At this point all I can add is my opinion, based on, well…. my opinion.
Personally, I am not sure what bugs me more, the media/US gov putting out reports with the underlying message of,”Oh no, the big terrorist is comming to get us”, or the idiot people in this country that believe it. I tend to agree with comment #12. This is just another “terrorist” stopped from destorying the world, just like the ‘underpants bomber’. The powers that be are using the MSM, which they own to implant into the minds of those that still too lazy to use the net for much else then playing farmland, to watch out, a terrorist is behind every corner.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org
http://www.jewsnotzionists.org
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September 5th, 2010 at 11:43 am
cyndy said:
Of course, your idiotic links aside, the flip side to that is the fact that there are nasties out there who want us dead or bowing (as shown by approx 1300 years of history), and such need to be slapped down hard whenever they make a move, as they did several years ago.
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October 7th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
I read this, not only does it display crass ignorance (or political opportunism) but also the total unwillingness of the media to do basic fact checking when scare-mongering is an option. I actually sent a letter to the Guardian UK, which I am sure they will never print.
Not only that it’s actually somewhat infuriating because these people have been arrested and probably thrown away for years for having a substance less radioactive than bananas and less toxic than household bleach.
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June 29th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
[...] It’s really no surprise at all, because just last year, there was a similar incident where an aircraft counterweight was being passed off as dangerous radio… [...]
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