Move along, nothing here to see.
Two Department of Energy security officials tasked with transporting deadly substances left plutonium in the back of their Ford Expedition, where it was promptly stolen from a Marriott parking lot in San Antonio.
And over a year later and after what appears to be a ham-handed investigation that was prematurely shut down perhaps for fear of public embarrassment, authorities still have no clue as to the whereabouts of what the government admits are “bomb-usable materials”.
There’s some hyper-ventilation here. First, not said is what kind of plutonium it was. If it’s not Pu-239, then it’s not useful for explosive purposes.
Second, you need 4 kg of the stuff. A thin disk the size of a quarter is less than 10% of what’s required. From what little specification there is here, it sounds more like part of an RTG core.
well, it aint *hardly* EVER the fcukup that gets ya.
it’s the COVERUP and DENIALS.
just ask tricky dick or a host of high level officials caught lying and denying.
mebbe better make that slick willy.
Zerohedge also calls it a “robbery”. No, it was a burglary. In a robbery, the perp confronts the victim and takes valuables by force or threat of force.
And the amounts of the nuclear material involved may indeed have been tiny. Might not have been solid disks of the metals, but Bakelite coupons with a tiny speck of the stuff bonded into the center. I have such a gamma source included with my scintillometer for calibration purposes.
But if these people were tasked with recovering these samples, and safely returning them to their HQ, then they failed big-time by leaving them in a place vulnerable to car prowlers.
maybe it was ,we will leave it in the parking lot unguarded and then we will go inside and go to sleep. How did anyone know it was there.
Here’s an idea … let’s disband the $11M Federal Agency tasked with the safe transport of these highly dangerous, poisonous, radioactive materials … and hire Fed Ex … who do an outstanding job delivering everything I order.
After all … this Agency is only transporting … “insignificant” amounts of these materials that “pose no danger to the public”. Sounds like a job for Fed Ex. But NOT UPS … they suck, and can’t get anything to my doorstep ontime and undamaged.
LOL!!!!
ah jeez kenji.
1st time in YEARS I called ups on Monday for a pickup yesterday.
I think their clerks are dyslexic. if ya know what I mean.
historystuff…leave us dyslexics out of your UPS dilemma :-))))
….(UPS), or charging outrageous brokerage fees…
Luckily it was a Ford Expedition – so they won’t get far.
Accidentally left in the vehicle or deliberately?
Discuss.
Has anyone done a lifestyle audit on the transport crew? Have they taken fancy vacations, bought expensive automobiles? Retained the services of high roller call girls/boys?
How many tried to make a recent income tax return of one billion dollars sound plausible?
I recommend they shut down the power in San Antonio some night. Then arrest any citizens who appear to be glowing.
Shy of a protected area for nuclear material the second best safe storage is in a Marriott parking lot.
… where the problem … just … disappears !!
So much better than burying under a Nevada mountain.
Look on the bright side – it probably wasn’t stolen by Russia or China.
They already have tons of the stuff.
Or Iran for that matter…..
https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-nuclear-chief-says-uranium-stockpile-reaches-950-tons/
Nice quote here: “Instead of building this factory in the next seven or eight years, we built it during the negotiations but did not start it,” Salehi said, according to Reuters.”
As to the article of topic: The concluding paragraphs are what bother me the most.
The Energy Department’s inspector general concluded in 2009 – the most recent public accounting – that at least a pound of plutonium and 45 pounds of highly-enriched uranium that had gone missing in the prior half-decade (since 2004) “were significant” and could be used by terrorists. The inspector general’s report stated, “Considering the potential health risks associated with these materials and the potential for misuse should they fall into the wrong hands, the quantities written off were significant.”
The 2009 report also harshly criticized the Energy Department for neglecting prior internal calls to correct poor accounting procedures which reportedly resulted in other loss incidents. The department still “may be unable to detect lost or stolen material” the inspector general said in its report — something now 100% confirmed in the San Antonio incident. … And who knows how many other incidents have occurred wherein plutonium, uranium, or other radioactive materials were “lost” or “stolen” or “misplaced” that the public will never find out about? So again I say,
W.T.F.!!!
It is a calibration source for an alpha detector. The metallic PU is plated on the one inch disc and is less than 1 mm thick. It’s activity is very low and just enough to give enough counts in a reasonable time. You can hold it in your hand with zero risk. I have used this type of PU calibration sources many, many times. I still have all my fingers and my middle finger works just fine to demonstrate my contempt for such alarmist articles. IIRC, the calib source is a couple hundred bucks; the stolen detector is probably 20,000 bucks.