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Threat Assessment: Stanford Tracks Thefts of Former Soviet Nuclear Material Researchers at Stanford University said 40 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium and plutonium have been stolen from nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union during the past decade, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, March 1). “It truly is frightening,” said Lyudmila Zaitseva, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies. “I think this is the tip of the iceberg.” While much of the stolen material has been recovered, at least four pounds of highly enriched uranium remains missing, according to Reuters. Zaitseva said that the destination of much of the missing nuclear materials is still unknown. “We haven’t found a single occasion in which the actual end users have been caught,” Zaitseva said. “We can only guess by the routes where the material is going. We can’t say for sure if it is Iraq, Iran, North Korea, al-Qaeda or Hezbollah. We can only make assumptions” (Andrew Quinn, Reuters/Yahoo.com, March 6). The total amount of missing weapon-grade nuclear material could be at least 10 times higher than officially believed, Zaitseva said. “We don’t know what’s missing,” she said. “That’s the most frightening thing.” Stanford Tracks Stolen Nuclear Materials Stanford international studies researchers have compiled information on missing nuclear material into a new database called the Database on Nuclear Smuggling, Theft and Orphan Radiation Sources. The researchers combine information from two unclassified databases and confirm it with additional sources from government agencies. They then re-evaluate the information to ensure accuracy. “You’d be surprised how much scientific junk is in the existing databases, from mixing up units to reporting on tertiary sources,” said Friedrich Steinhausler, one of the Stanford researchers who worked on the compilation of the database. “We decided to look at each case … is it scientifically credible? And who is reporting this? Is it a scientific agency or a central Asian local newspaper?” The database focuses on illegally trafficked nuclear materials and orphaned radiation sources — radioactive materials that have been lost. The information — which is divided into 21 categories, such as incident type, material type, reported destination and perpetrators involved — can only be accessed by carefully checked researchers working with the Stanford team. Orphaned radioactive materials pose a threat because victims might not know than they have been exposed, Steinhausler said. “Many countries don’t even have a central register of radioactive materials,” he said. “If they don’t know what they have, they don’t know what they’ve lost.” A good illustration of threat posed by abandoned radioactive materials comes from the United States itself, which has an excellent radioactive material registering system, Steinhausler said. Each year the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission receives 200 reports of missing, stolen and abandoned radioactive materials, according to a Stanford University press release. “If the U.S. loses control of a registered source almost every second day, what do you expect goes on in the rest of the world?” Steinhausler asked. “Whether it is in scrap metal or in terrorism, you will meet again.” Steinhausler said he and other Stanford researchers compiled the database to raise public awareness and to force governments to increase security of nuclear and radioactive materials. “We cannot supply the means to improve the situation,” Steinhausler said. “But, as academics, we feel the responsibility to raise awareness. We’re pinpointing weakness and loopholes and saying, ‘Do something about it’” (Stanford University release, March 5).
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