Global Security Newswire

There have been in excess of 30 incidents in the last 10 years where radioactive substances that could be used to make a weapon have gone unaccounted for in the United Kingdom, the London Guardian reported on Sunday.

The Sellafield atomic energy plant in Cumbria, the oil services company Schlumberger, the Royal Free hospital in London, and a Rolls-Royce facility in Derby were among the entities to have lost control of possibly lethal substances, according to the results of a freedom of information request by the British newspaper.

A number of small spheres of highly radioactive ytterbium 169, as well as quantities of depleted uranium, cesium 137, and cobalt 60 were among the types of radioactive sources that went missing or misplaced.

Security experts are concerned about the possibility of bad actors pilfering poorly protected radioactive materials to build a "dirty bomb" that would use conventional explosives to disseminate the radioactive materials across a wide area.