Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen From Their Rental Car | Hacker News Reader

Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen From Their Rental Car

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54 pointsVaslo35 comments

The article lists these as calibration sources. That means they are minuscule.

Bad that hit happened, yes. Worth the headline and attention in the article? Nah.

This particular case isn't terrible, but it illustrates the general attitude towards material security that could be seriously bad. With materials like this I don't think there is an acceptable threshold under which we can say 'no big deal' if lost.

Yes. If you want a cesium calibration source, you can order one online from United Nuclear.[1] Costs $145, plus $15 shipping. Anyone can order. "If you're ordering hazardous items, don't forget to sign the disclaimer on the bottom of the order form!"

Plutonium alpha sources are available from Eckert and Ziegler, and can be ordered in the US from Direct Scientific.[2] Call for pricing. They're a disk with some plutonium electroplated onto platinum on stainless steel. There's no window, because this is an alpha emitter and the particles would not get through.

As hazardous objects, these rank well below a steak knife.

[1] https://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&c... [2] https://www.drct.com/dss/sources/alpha.htm

What are the chances someone knew the plutonium was being transported in that particular vehicle?

I used to have to move around a radioactive instrument for work[1]. It was in a big orange box with nuclear stickers all over it. Not very subtle.

Though I remember having to get a permit from the nuclear regulatory commission to transfer it off site. It always had to be locked up or under your control. It didn't have much radioactive material, but some.

It radiated enough that when someone stored their radiation badge in the box, they were very very worried about him when the badge was read..

[1] http://www.troxlerlabs.com/Products/Catalog/catid/1

As a kind of thought experiment I wonder how being the new "owner" of this would be anything other than a terrible curse. It's not really useful in any way to most people so you probably decide to hawk it. You have the full might of the DoE and other government agencies monitoring for it. Let's say you somehow establish contact with a weapons dealer or foreign government agent. They are just as likely to whack you and take it to clean up the trail as any other outcome. There's basically no way to win, and no zero sum in this game.

In Brazil, in the 1980s, a couple of burglars broke into an abandoned hospital and stole a supply of cesium chloride from a radiotherapy machine. The difference between your scenario and this one is that the thieves didn't know what it was -- it just looked important and expensive. The whole thing was a huge screw-up, and a number of people -- including one of the burglars -- died from exposure to radiation before the authorities sorted it all out.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

I thought of that story right away and, man, there’s a lot of heartbreaking elements to it. Also incompetence all around. Who thinks leaving something with that much potential for harm in an abandoned building?!

Edit: ...is a good idea?!

...

Why is plutonium being transported in a rented car...

Why not? Be happy it wasn't bid out to Meals on Wheels.

Not trying to be political but when in the past was incompetence at this level considered OK?

Are you serious? When? Every single moment, that's when.

People are people, they make mistakes.

Although in this case it's clearly Trump's fault.

It's a loophole. Lawyers for the big rental car companies are frantically scrambling to update their rental agreements as we speak.

"Renter agrees not to transport nuclear material, chemical weapons..."

The question is not that - it's why the two people tasked with protecting it didn't keep it with them.

My bet is that it's a very small sample and relatively harmless.

It's more likely than not that the neighborhood will see a cluster of radioactive-exposure-caused diseases in the next few years.

I think the cesium is probably more dangerous than the plutonium, because it ignites spontaneously in air and explodes in contact with water. If the crackheads who have it break open the container, we'll probably know who they are pretty quickly, especially if it's a radioactive isotope.

Indeed. All we'll need to do is to follow the blue glow.

I imagine the Cesium is in form of a stable salt. I wouldn't like to transport pure radioactive Cesium.

I guess I was imagining that it was the kind that comes pure in a glass vial, but it's probably more like this:

https://www.imagesco.com/geiger/radioactive-sources.html

These are a lot like the description of the plutonium sample as well.

I have traveled with a nuclear soil density gauge a few times and was always told to keep it in the truck at night so as to minimize my exposure. That said the case was locked and the case was then locked by two independent locks to the truck. The gauge I was using used small cesium and americium sources.

Wait, is it harmless or is it going to cause a cluster of diseases in the next few years?? It can't be both!

Take a look sometime at the history of storing and transporting nuclear material in the US and see if you ever sleep again. The combination locks set to 000000, the dropped wrenches almost blowing a hole in North Carolina, the senior officers getting drunk in Moscow bars... the list goes on.

Then remember that these are just the declassified stories from the US, and that there’s probably even more hair-raising tales from other countries and/or still classified.

Can you please give me a link to that stories?

Command and Control is a well regarded book on the subject that has been discussed here before (I haven't read it yet so I can't make a personal recommendation).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)

Can you recommend any good books on the subject?

"Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" is pretty good. I read it a while back after seeing it linked here.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G?ref_=k4w_ss_dp_lp

I think the reality of the issue is the biggest counter-argument to M.A.D. Not that the concept of M.A.D. isn't sound, per se, just that it's not a strong retort to concerns about the risk of use of nuclear weapons, or even the outbreak of nuclear war.

M.A.D. is dependent on both a strong rational actor model and as well as a strong and strict state apparatus. In reality, at the end of the day what seems to have kept us away from nuclear war is the simple fact that most people are extremely risk averse and, in the first instance, will behave rather empathetically even against enemies. That's comforting from a humanist perspective, but given the prevalence of traits like psychopathy and other pathologies in the general population not anywhere near the kinds of odds that justify the current number and administration of nuclear weapons and weapons-grade material.

I don't care about sloppy combination locks or omg-I-almost-launched-a-retaliation-strike-at-a-flock-of-geese, I care about a commercial rental vehicle being used that you know, I might rent some day and drive.

Because the government will reimburse for the full cost of a rental vs just 53.5 cents per mile (circa 2017 GSA policy) in your own vehicle.

Ummm why was plutonium allowed to be transported in a contractors car?

It's not a question of where it is, but when it is.

Insert plot device for mid eighties popular film franchise.

The 12 Monkeys TV series recently ended and it had pretty much every single time travel trope in there eventually, it was kind of awesome.

if it happened in Russia, i'd say that this was just a show to cover the sale of the plutonium. Never let good plutonium go waste :)

Are you serious? You can just load up a rented car with plutonium? There's not something in the ToS to prevent that?

I guess Doc Brown needed some fuel for the flux capacitor...

One example of what continues to concern me about nuclear technology -- energy and its large-scale use, in particular.

The technology may work just fine, when well-managed.

The human capacity for managing it, repeatedly proves itself incapable. And human history does not give me a lot of hope for that changing.

In this case, samples like these are essential for science. Heads need to roll, figuratively if not literally, to impress upon those remaining that you do not cheap out nor lazy out on your job.

And, for the money and management part, the trail needs to be chased upward, including to Congress. People who enable this need to be forced out of responsibility.

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