[ RadSafe ] NRC issues License to phony company

[Bob Casparius]

 From The New York Times

July 12, 2007


A Nuclear Ruse Uncovers Holes in U.S. Security

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/eric_lipton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>ERIC 
LIPTON

WASHINGTON, July 11 ­ Undercover Congressional 
investigators set up a bogus company and obtained 
a license from the 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nuclear_regulatory_commission/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission in March that would have 
allowed them to buy the radioactive materials 
needed for a so-called dirty bomb.

The investigators, from the 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/government_accountability_office/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Government 
Accountability Office, demonstrated once again 
that the security measures put in place since the 
2001 terrorist attacks to prevent radioactive 
materials from getting into the wrong hands are 
insufficient, according to a G.A.O. report, which 
is scheduled to be released at a Senate hearing Thursday.

“Given that terrorists have expressed an interest 
in obtaining nuclear material, the Congress and 
the American people expect licensing programs for 
these materials to be secure,” said Gregory D. 
Kutz, an investigator at the accountability 
office, in testimony prepared for the hearing.

The bomb the investigators could have built would 
not have caused widespread damage or even high- 
level contamination. But it still could have had 
serious consequences, particularly economic ones, 
in any city where it was set off.

The undercover operation involved an application 
from a fake construction company, supposedly 
based in West Virginia, that the investigators 
had incorporated even though it had no offices, 
Internet site or employees. Its only asset was a postal box.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials did not 
visit the company or try to interview its 
executives in person. Instead, within 28 days, 
they mailed the license to the West Virginia postal box, the report says.

That license, on a standard-size piece of paper, 
also had so few security measures incorporated 
into it that the investigators, using 
commercially available equipment, were able to 
modify it easily, removing a limit on the amount 
of radioactive material they could buy, the report says.

With that forged document, the auditors 
approached two industrial equipment companies to 
arrange to buy dozens of portable moisture 
density gauges, which cost about $5,000 each and 
are used to read the density of soil and pavement 
when building highways. The machines include 
americium-241 and cesium-137, radioactive 
substances commonly used in industrial equipment. 
Auditors, convinced they had enough evidence to 
prove their point, called off the ruse before the devices were delivered.

But if they had gone ahead with the plot ­ which 
would have required extracting the radioactive 
materials from the machines and combining them, a 
job that could harm anyone in close contact ­ 
they could have built a bomb that would have 
contaminated an area about the length of a city 
block, according to the regulatory commission.

As with any dirty bomb, the resulting low-level 
contamination would not have presented an 
immediate health hazard. Still, the area would 
have to have been evacuated and decontaminated.

Edward McGaffigan Jr., a member of the regulatory 
commission’s governing board, said the agency had 
taken steps to improve safeguards immediately 
after learning about the security lapses from 
auditors. The commission now requires members of 
its staff to visit any company it is not familiar 
with before approving a license application. It 
is also looking for ways to change the license to 
make it harder to modify or counterfeit, Mr. McGaffigan said.

But he said the danger associated with the amount 
of radioactive material the auditors were trying 
to buy should not be overstated. And the 
operation would have been much more expensive and 
complicated than pulling off a more conventional 
attack involving a truck bomb or a chemical tanker truck.

“Why would I not blow up a chemical tanker on a 
train with chlorine in it or other toxic 
materials, at a tiny fraction of the cost before 
doing this very elaborate exercise?” Mr. McGaffigan said.

A nuclear commission spokesman, David McIntyre, 
said the agency had not inspected the offices of 
the bogus company before issuing a license 
because the portable devices the Congressional 
auditors were trying to buy are considered a 
lower-level threat than that posed by more 
dangerous radioactive materials, which it regulates more strictly.

But Senator 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/norm_coleman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Norm 
Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, who has pushed 
Congressional auditors to investigate nuclear 
threats since 2003, said the commission was guilty of playing down the threat.

“The economic and psychological effects of a 
dirty bomb detonating on American soil would be 
devastating,” Mr. Coleman said in a statement 
Wednesday. “The N.R.C. has a pre 9-11 mindset in 
a post 9-11 world focusing just on preventing another Chernobyl.”

The findings by the Congressional auditors are 
the latest in a series of reports about 
management and procedural weaknesses at the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission that investigators 
have argued make the nation more vulnerable to a 
dirty bomb attack. In 2003, auditors first 
recommended that licenses for radioactive 
materials not be granted without inspections or 
other means of verifying that the applicant was legitimate.

In 2006, it recommended that the agency take 
steps to make sure its documents cannot be forged.

The use of undercover tactics is not a new one 
for the auditors. They used a similar approach 
last year when trying to smuggle radioactive 
materials across the border and investigating how 
effective the government’s protections were 
against fraudulent efforts to get cash assistance 
after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The most recent investigation did turn up some 
reassuring news: a second ploy by the auditors to 
acquire radioactive material was thwarted.

In 34 states, local regulatory authorities handle 
license applications. In Maryland, the 
Congressional investigators sent a similar 
application for a license to buy construction 
equipment that relied on a radioactive source. 
But Maryland officials said they wanted to 
inspect the bogus company’s offices and storage 
yard, so the auditors withdrew their application


Robert Casparius, Radiation Safety Officer
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Environmental Health and Safety
Forchheimer 800
1300 Morris Park Avenue
Bronx, NY 10461
718-430-2243