Phony firm got radioactive materials, easily

Phony firm got radioactive materials, easily

www.usatoday.com

WASHINGTON — Undercover investigators posing as corporate bosses got a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to buy radiological material that could be used in a so-called dirty bomb, according to a government report released Wednesday.

Senators and Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators say their nine-month probe of NRC licensing practices revealed loopholes that could give terrorists easy access to cesium-137 and other dangerous materials that could be used...

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 11-7-2007 by UM_Gazz]

Al Qaeda could set up a phony company, gone through the NRC and obtained all the radioactive material they need.

Or, perhaps worse, they already have?

So it could be relatively easy to enter the country, obtain radioactive materials, explosives, and eventually set off a radiological bomb.

Anyone surprised by this news?

While we are busy at war with terrorism, it seems that some security issues at home need urgent attention. Unless one wants to make such an attack scenario possible.

www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I don't believe the scare tactics rubbish about dirty bombs.

en.wikipedia.org...

Read the first paragraph.

Hum so terrorist cells, Gut feelings, Al-qaida back to pre 9/11 force and now easy market for dirty bombs materials are in the rise all in the matter of days.

Are we been prep for something or what.

Originally posted by marg6043
Hum so terrorist cells, Gut feelings, Al-qaida back to pre 9/11 force and now easy market for dirty bombs materials are in the rise all in the matter of days.

Are we been prep for something or what.

They're not going to do anything...we've seen this buffoonery before...the gov't is prepping you for paranoia.

Don't be scared, laugh at the fools...

The influx of news like this is incredible.
Something has to be up.

Radioactive Devices Go Astray in Canada?

And I'm not so concerned as to what kind of
damage a dirty bomb would cause, rather
what this government would do afterwards.

Originally posted by uberarcanist
I don't believe the scare tactics rubbish about dirty bombs.

I would not so quickly dismiss the danger of a dirty bomb, much depends on the size of the explosion, and the radiological material used. If they got their hands on cesium-137 in a high enough quantity.. the effects could be dramatic, those who survived the initial explosion, would be faced with serious illness and even possible death from exposure to the cesium-137. Hardly something anyone would call a trivial situation. And when it comes to true terrorists, and motives, or other secret plots, the radiological, or "dirty bomb" would serve as a great weapon of terror.

On cesium-137, an example from the article you linked to:

en.wikipedia.org...
Two metal scavengers broke into an abandoned radiotherapy clinic and removed a teletherapy source capsule containing powdered cesium-137 with an activity of 50 TBq. They brought it home to one of the men to take it apart and sell it as scrap metal. Later that day both men were showing acute signs of radiation illness with vomiting and one of the men had a swollen hand and diarrhea. A few days later one of the men punctured the 1 mm thick window of the capsule, allowing the powder to leak out and when realizing the powder glowed blue in the dark, brought it back home to his family and friends to show it off. After 2 weeks of spread by contact contamination causing an increasing number of adverse health effects, the correct diagnosis of acute radiation sickness was made at a hospital and proper precautions could be put into procedure. By this time a total of 249 people were contaminated, 151 exhibited both external and internal contamination of which 20 people were seriously ill and 5 people died [7].

That from a relatively small amount cesium-137.

If a dirty bomb does go off in the U.S.A. we've been shown how it could happen, we've been warned of new recent threats and "gut feelings"

Anything seems possible at this point.

[edit on 11-7-2007 by UM_Gazz]

Canada Fears Dirty Bomb

A new study by the Canadian government predicts that the explosion of even a small dirty bomb in downtown Toronto could result in a rush on the city’s medical facilities and an economic toll of more than $23 billion.

The disclosure comes just months after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said a dirty bomb assault in that country was "overdue.”

More foreshadowing.. more and more and more.
I'm tellin' ya, if you live in a major city, keep your eyes pealed.


[edit-emphasis]

[edit on 7/11/2007 by aecreate]

Well, there's nothing an ordinary citizen can do, but if one does go off-DON'T PANIC...the odds are very low that you've been exposed to a significant amount of radiation.

Originally posted by uberarcanist
They're not going to do anything...we've seen this buffoonery before...the gov't is prepping you for paranoia.

Don't be scared, laugh at the fools...

I agree with you that they are prepping us but I don't think it's for the sake of paranoia this time. I think they are prepping us for something they know is going to happen. I think all of these sudden announcements is for back story. It's so that it's more believable when it finally does come. I hate to say it but I feel that we may really be in store for a serious attack and again it will be a rallying point to push an agenda thats already been laid out long before.

As ex Senator Santorum hinted at recently:

"In an alarming display of fearmongering, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum has suggested that a series of 'unfortunate events,' namely terrorist attacks, will occur within the next year and change American citizen's perception of the war.

"Santorum went on to clearly imply that terror attacks will occur inside America which will alter the body politic and lead to a reversal of the anti-war sentiment now dominating the country."
Huh?

That's similar to how 9-11 is always being milked for and it's what the next attack will do. It would have to be a big event to turn the tide...the sentiment right now in terms of this administration and the war.

When this next terror attack happens and with the fear of America becoming a new Israel, the American people will support tougher wartime actions wherever and whenever this administration desires.

That's how it will go down.

Originally posted by aecreate

And I'm not so concerned as to what kind of
damage a dirty bomb would cause, rather
what this government would do afterwards.

I think you should be concerned about both of those issues really.

Consider the dirty bomb in a plural and not just singular sense as well. If they are set off in heavily populated areas and at different points (like hijacking planes and striking "multiple" targets) the short and long term damage would be horrendous. I wonder how a city's public water supply would be affected by the radioactive ash?

Well...personally I hope it's all posturing but to quote a famous prognosticator, "I have a bad feeling about this".

Originally posted by lee anoma
Well...personally I hope it's all posturing but to quote a famous prognosticator, "I have a bad feeling about this".

It is possible that ultimately these reports have exactly that planned and desired reaction from the public who read and watch the mainstream news media.

for something more worrying , do a google search for the boy scout who built a nuclear reactor in his shed.

Just thought I'd link this thread to a post that wenfieldsecret put on the Rare aircraft pictures thread

Originally posted by wenfieldsecret
sorry for all the postings of c-135 reconnaissance photos....but i live near offutt....and i'm a big fan....

check this out....i was driving by today...and i was like...this looks like a combat sent...then i looked again and noticed no pod under the nose....and i was like...in my couple years here...i've never seen it....turns out it's wc-135...used for picking up traces of nuclear elements in the air....
it's never here...in fact the site where i found the foto of the exact plane...(1 there's only 1, 2 the tail number is almost distinctive)...was written in japanese or chinese...i'm not sure which....

www004.upp.so-net.ne.jp...

Don't know where he is posting from yet. But the WC-135 is used to take samples of the atmosphere, primarilary to look for radioactive particles.

Air sampling missions were routinely conducted over the Far East, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, Mediterranean Sea, the Polar regions, and off the coasts of South America and Africa. The WC-135W played a major role in tracking radioactive debris from the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster. Currently the air-sampling mission supports the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which prohibits any nation from above ground nuclear weapons testing. The WC-135W is currently the only aircraft in the inventory conducting air-sampling operations.

For those of you who are saying this situation is just to insight fear I think are trivializing the situation. One good example is of the Nuclear Boy Scout.
Nuclear boy scout video

Nuclear boy scout article

By this time, David Hahn was 17, and he decided to stop fooling around. He mixed his radium with his americium and aluminium, wrapped it in aluminium foil, and then wrapped the whole mess in his thorium and uranium - of course, all held together with gaffer tape. Finally he had success - the bizarre ball got more radioactive every day. Perhaps too much success - he could pick up the radioactivity 5 houses away. He panicked, and began to dismantle his creation.

At 2.40 am on the 31st of August, 1994, the local police were called because a young man was doing something suspicious near a car. David told the police to be careful of his toolbox, because it was radioactive. Soon some men in ventilated white moon suits were chopping up his radioactive shed with chainsaws, and stuffing the parts into thirty nine 200-litre sealed drums which they took away to a nuclear waste repository. The clean-up cost about $120,000 - but it did protect the 40,000 nearby inhabitants from harm.

The video is short and the article is a very good read. It is worth the time and the story of the boy scout goes deeper then what is said. He ended up going into the Navy.
It is a good story to note.

[edit on 12-7-2007 by RedGolem]

Mod Edit: Fixed link

[edit on 12-7-2007 by UM_Gazz]

Ha. I've been saying this for years. They've just figured this out? How I know is that I used to work as a geotech engineer testing the soil with the very same equipment mentioned.

Investigators filled out applications using fake names for a bogus company's president and radiation safety officer. They claimed the company wanted to buy portable moisture-density gauges commonly used at construction sites. The gauges contain sealed gamma-emitting radiation sources, such as cesium-137, and sealed neutron sources, both of which can be used to make dirty bombs.

There is also Americium contained in the equipment. I'm guessing that's the neutron source?

Right after 9/11 we had one stolen from our shed on a construction site. Remember this is near DC. Sadly enough, not much was really done about it. I believe we got a fine but I can't remember exactly.

One more thing off topic for those guys who drive the compactors. Watch out for the inspector please. We had a coworker run over buy a sheepsfoot roller and killed. People who know what a sheepsfoot roller is will know how that must have looked. I didn't see it. Just what I heard. RIP

[edit on 7/12/2007 by Griff]

Hear is a short video about a radiological attack that was stopped from happening in time
video

And if you want to know everything that was talked about in the documentary here is the transcript of the report.

NARRATOR: We can't claim we haven't been warned. In 1995, Muslim rebels from Chechnya directed a TV reporter to a park in central Moscow. The package she found contained a small amount of explosives and something else: Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. This was the first known appearance of what has become a household word: a dirty bomb.

JOHN ASHCROFT (Attorney General, United States of America): ...an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.

VINCE CANNISTRARO (Ex-Chief, Central Intelligence Agency Counterterrorism): A so-called "dirty bomb" is basically just a conventional explosive with a radioactive core to it. You're going to broadcast the radioactivity over the area of the conventional explosive.

In Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, there were discovered a number of documents dealing with the methodology of putting together the most deadly kind of dirty bomb imaginable.

Originally posted by Griff

There is also Americium contained in the equipment. I'm guessing that's the neutron source?

If I remember right in the article it said the americium was passed through aluminum that gave off the neutrons he was after to make the reaction to get the uranium.

Man I hate to repeat what everyone is saying, but it really does seem like some sort of preperation. It's almost like all this news is coming out so they can give us the explanation that much faster when it happens. I hope this is all just scare tactics for elections next year and not foreshadowing.

I live in Chicago and I am really worried that if there is another planned attack it will be here. I remember reading that the guy who used to own the twin towers now owns the Sears Tower.

Originally posted by UM_Gazz


Al Qaeda could set up a phony company, gone through the NRC and obtained all the radioactive material they need.

Or, perhaps worse, they already have?

So it could be relatively easy to enter the country, obtain radioactive materials, explosives, and eventually set off a radiological bomb.

Anyone surprised by this news?

While we are busy at war with terrorism, it seems that some security issues at home need urgent attention. Unless one wants to make such an attack scenario possible.

www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Things like this is how 911 slipped under our noses , not conspiracy ..
If someone is all the time telling you , " Someone's after you ! " after a while , you stop taking it seriously . Exactly what caused 911 .