Photo by Christopher Farrugia on Unsplash
When it comes to things you want to keep track of, you’d think that nuclear and radioactive material would be right up there at the top of the list. But according to the inspectors, countries have reported losing track of such dangerous material nearly 190 times last year alone — and thousands of times over the past 17 years.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported the figure today, based on their database in which 139 participating countries voluntarily report “incidents of nuclear and other radioactive material being out of regulatory control.”
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Now this doesn’t mean there are over 100 nukes lost somewhere out there in the world waiting for Nicole Kidman and George Clooney to defuse at the last second. The database, which began in 1993, includes everything from naturally occurring nuclear material to valuable scrap metal that has been radioactively contaminated. In most cases the lost material is not believed to be involved in trafficking or what the IAEA calls “malicious use.” But some of it is.
The IAEA says that of the 3,686 cases reported since 1993, 290 incidents “involved a confirmed or likely act of trafficking or malicious use…”
“A small number of these incidents involved seizures of kilogram quantities of potentially weapons-usable nuclear material, but the majority involved gram quantities,” an IAEA factsheet [PDF] says. “In some of these cases, there were indications that the seized materials were samples from larger unsecured stockpiles. Some of these incidents involved attempts to sell or traffic these materials across international borders.”
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Last year only six of the 190 incidents were believed to be related to trafficking or malicious use.
Still, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi offered a warning at this week’s IAEA conference on nuclear security:
“Nuclear and radioactive material will always attract malevolent interest from terrorists and other criminals. We can never relax our guard,” he said.
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