Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #669 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

MP3: 30-Minute Seg­ment
REALAUDIO NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains FTRs 668 and 669 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute seg­ment.

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the death of a white suprema­cist, the pro­gram notes that the late James Cum­mings was work­ing on build­ing a dirty bomb. An appar­ent devo­tee of Hitler, his sit­u­a­tion bodes poor­ly for the near future.

Next, the pro­gram revis­its the sub­ject of the Bakken For­ma­tion in the states of North Dako­ta and Mon­tana. The For­ma­tion has far more oil than pre­vi­ous­ly thought. The pro­gram then high­lights anoth­er fre­quent sub­ject deal­ing with ener­gy, not­ing the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Fischer/Tropsch process for syn­the­siz­ing gaso­line from coal.

Revis­it­ing the Amer­i­can morass in the Viet­nam war, the pro­gram notes Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the Nixon cam­paign’s inter­fer­ence in the peace talks. LBJ called it “trea­son.”

Next, the broad­cast revis­its the sub­ject of AIDS. For years, these broad­casts have pre­sent­ed the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that AIDS is a man-made dis­ease. Dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Oba­ma’s pas­tor Rev­erend Jere­mi­ah Wright gar­nered pub­lic­i­ty by assert­ing that the U.S. gov­ern­ment made AIDS. With the pub­lic focus on this claim, it is inter­est­ing and sig­nif­i­cant that “experts” exam­in­ing the genet­ic clock of the virus (the rate at which it has appar­ent­ly mutat­ed) con­clud­ed that the dis­ease has been around for approx­i­mate­ly 100 years. In fact, as has been made clear in past dis­cus­sion with Ed Haslam, the genet­ic clocks of the virus indi­cate that the virus is very new. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the claim of the dis­ease being around for 100 years is delib­er­ate dis­in­for­ma­tion under the cir­cum­stances must be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered.

The broad­cast con­cludes with a look at “Euro­fas­cism.” After set­ting exam­in­ing alle­ga­tions that Aus­tri­an “yup­pie fas­cist” Jurg Haider’s death in an auto­mo­bile acci­dent was an assas­si­na­tion, the pro­gram high­lights the fact that Haider was a clos­et gay–a fact deeply dis­turb­ing to his sup­port­ers.

Revis­it­ing the sub­ject of the NPD (the top Ger­man neo-Nazi par­ty), a defec­tor has not­ed that the orga­ni­za­tion receives fund­ing from old Nazis in Latin America–a ref­er­ence (no doubt) to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the Fischer/Tropsch process and its devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion by I.G. Far­ben pri­or and dur­ing World War II; review of AIDS as a man­made dis­ease; review of the UNPO’s cham­pi­oning of Lako­ta inde­pen­dence; review of Louis Beam’s “lead­er­less resis­tance” strat­e­gy.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the death of a white suprema­cist, the pro­gram notes that the late James Cum­mings was appar­ent­ly work­ing on build­ing a dirty bomb.

“James G. Cum­mings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, alleged­ly had a cache of radioac­tive mate­ri­als in his home suit­able for build­ing a “dirty bomb.”

Accord­ing to an FBI field intel­li­gence report from the Wash­ing­ton Region­al Threat and Analy­sis Cen­ter post­ed online by Wik­iLeaks, an orga­ni­za­tion that posts leaked doc­u­ments, an inves­ti­ga­tion into the case revealed that radioac­tive mate­ri­als were removed from Cum­mings’ home after his shoot­ing death on Dec. 9.

The report post­ed on the Wik­iLeaks Web site states that “On 9 Decem­ber 2008, radi­o­log­i­cal dis­per­sal device com­po­nents and lit­er­a­ture, and radioac­tive mate­ri­als, were dis­cov­ered at the Maine res­i­dence of an iden­ti­fied deceased [per­son] James Cum­mings.”

The sec­tion refer­ring to Cum­mings can be read here.

It says that four 1‑gallon con­tain­ers of 35 per­cent hydro­gen per­ox­ide, ura­ni­um, tho­ri­um, lithi­um met­al, ther­mite, alu­minum pow­der, beryl­li­um, boron, black iron oxide and mag­ne­sium rib­bon were found in the home.

Also found was lit­er­a­ture on how to build “dirty bombs” and infor­ma­tion about cesium-137, stron­tium-90 and cobalt-60, radioac­tive mate­ri­als. The FBI report also stat­ed there was evi­dence link­ing James Cum­mings to white suprema­cist groups. This would seem to con­firm obser­va­tions by local trades­men who worked at the Cum­mings home that he was an ardent admir­er of Adolf Hitler and had a col­lec­tion of Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia around the house, includ­ing a promi­nent­ly dis­played flag with swasti­ka. Cum­mings claimed to have pieces of Hitler’s per­son­al sil­ver­ware and place set­tings, painter Mike Rob­bins said a few days after the shoot­ing. . . .”

“Report: ‘Dirty Bomb’ Parts Found in Slain Man’s Home” by Wal­ter Grif­fin; Ban­gor Dai­ly News; 2/9/2009.

2. Next, the pro­gram revis­its the sub­ject of the Bakken For­ma­tion in the states of North Dako­ta and Mon­tana. The For­ma­tion has far more oil than pre­vi­ous­ly thought. Note that the UNPO has sup­port­ed the inde­pen­dence of the Lako­ta, whose claimed ter­ri­to­ry embraces the Bakken For­ma­tion.

“North Dako­ta and Mon­tana have an esti­mat­ed 3.0 to 4.3 bil­lion bar­rels of undis­cov­ered, tech­ni­cal­ly recov­er­able oil in an area known as the Bakken For­ma­tion.

A U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey assess­ment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recov­ered com­pared to the agen­cy’s 1995 esti­mate of 151 mil­lion bar­rels of oil.

Tech­ni­cal­ly recov­er­able oil resources are those pro­ducible using cur­rent­ly avail­able tech­nol­o­gy and indus­try prac­tices. USGS is the only provider of pub­licly avail­able esti­mates of undis­cov­ered tech­ni­cal­ly recov­er­able oil and gas resources.

New geo­log­ic mod­els applied to the Bakken For­ma­tion, advances in drilling and pro­duc­tion tech­nolo­gies, and recent oil dis­cov­er­ies have result­ed in these sub­stan­tial­ly larg­er tech­ni­cal­ly recov­er­able oil vol­umes. About 105 mil­lion bar­rels of oil were pro­duced from the Bakken For­ma­tion by the end of 2007. . . .”

“3 to 4.3 Bil­lion Bar­rels of Tech­ni­cal­ly Recov­er­able Oil Assessed in North Dako­ta and Mon­tana’s Bakken Formation–25 Times More Than 1995 Esti­mate”; Web­site of the Unit­ed States Geo­log­i­cal Ser­vice; 4/10/2008.

3. Turn­ing to anoth­er fre­quent sub­ject deal­ing with ener­gy, the broad­cast notes the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Fischer/Tropsch process for syn­the­siz­ing gaso­line from coal.

“Elec­tric cars have been get­ting a lot of buzz late­ly, but a more imme­di­ate­ly viable trans­porta­tion fuel of the future could be liq­uid derived from coal. Sci­en­tists have devised a new way to trans­form coal into gas for your car using far less ener­gy than the cur­rent process. The advance makes scal­ing up the envi­ron­men­tal­ly unfriend­ly fuel more eco­nom­i­cal than green­er alter­na­tives.

If oil prices rise again, adop­tion of the new coal-to-liq­uid tech­nol­o­gy, report­ed this week in Sci­ence,  could under­cut adop­tion of elec­tric vehi­cles or next-gen­er­a­tion bio­fu­els. And that’s bad news for the fight against cli­mate change.

The new process could cut the ener­gy cost of pro­duc­ing the fuel by 20 per­cent just by rejig­ger­ing the inter­me­di­ate chem­i­cal steps, said co-author Ben Glass­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Wit­wa­ter­srand in Johan­nes­burg, South Africa. But coal-derived fuel could pro­duce as much as twice as much CO2 as tra­di­tion­al petro­le­um fuels and at best will emit at least as much of the green­house gas.. . .”

“Bad News: Sci­en­tists Make Cheap Gas From Coal” by Alex­is Madri­gal; blog.wired.com; 3/26/2009.

4. Turn­ing the his­tor­i­cal clock back to the era of the Viet­nam War, we exam­ine Pres­i­dent John­son’s assess­ment that the Nixon cam­paign’s inter­fer­ence in his attempts to begin peace talks with North Viet­nam. LBJ referred to those attempts as “trea­son.”

“In the last months of his admin­is­tra­tion, Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son voiced wor­ry over the Viet­nam peace talks and stri­dent­ly sug­gest­ed that asso­ciates of Richard Nixon were attempt­ing to keep South Viet­nam away from the table until after the 1968 elec­tion, record­ings of tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions released Thurs­day show.

‘This is trea­son,’ John­son said, refer­ring to peo­ple close to Nixon, dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader Everett Dirk­sen. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent nev­er accused the Repub­li­can who would suc­ceed him of trea­son, but said, ‘If Nixon keeps the South Viet­namese away from the (peace) con­fer­ence, well that’s going to be his respon­si­bil­i­ty.’ . . .”

” ‘This is Trea­son,’ LBJ Said of Nixon’s Asso­ciates” by Kel­ly Shan­non [AP]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 12/5/2008; p. A20.

5. For many years, Mr. Emory has cov­ered the sub­ject of AIDS, pre­sent­ing a mas­sive and com­pelling body of evi­dence that the dis­ease was delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed. Dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Oba­ma’s pas­tor Rev­erend Jere­mi­ah Wright gar­nered pub­lic­i­ty by assert­ing that the U.S. gov­ern­ment made AIDS. With the pub­lic focus on this claim, it is inter­est­ing and sig­nif­i­cant that “experts” exam­in­ing the genet­ic clock of the virus (the rate at which it has appar­ent­ly mutat­ed) con­clud­ed that the dis­ease has been around for approx­i­mate­ly 100 years. In fact, as has been made clear in past dis­cus­sion with Ed Haslam, the genet­ic clocks of the virus indi­cate that the virus is very new. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the claim of the dis­ease being around for 100 years is delib­er­ate dis­in­for­ma­tion under the cir­cum­stances must be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered.

“The AIDS virus has been cir­cu­lat­ing among peo­ple for about 100 years, decades longer than sci­en­tists had thought, a new study sug­gests.

Genet­ic analy­sis push­es the esti­mat­ed ori­gin of HIV back to between 1884 and 1924, with a more focused esti­mate at 1908. Pre­vi­ous­ly, sci­en­tists had esti­mat­ed the ori­gin at around 1930. AIDS was­n’t rec­og­nized for­mal­ly until 1981, when it got the atten­tion of pub­lic health offi­cials in the Unit­ed States.

The new result is ‘not a mon­u­men­tal shift, but it means the virus was cir­cu­lat­ing under our radar even longer than we knew,’ says Michael Worobey of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, an author of the new work.

The results appear in today’s issue of the jour­nal Nature. Researchers note that the new­ly cal­cu­lat­ed dates fall dur­ing the rise of cities in Africa, and they sug­gest urban devel­op­ment may have pro­mot­ed HIV’s ini­tial estab­lish­ment and ear­ly spread. . . .”

“Analy­sis Finds Evi­dence of HIV a Cen­tu­ry Ago” by Mal­colm Rit­er [AP]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 10/2/2008; p. A3.

6. For many years, we’ve cov­ered the career of Aus­tri­an fas­cist Jurg Haider. Haider recent­ly died in an auto­mo­bile acci­dent, that some have sug­gest­ed was an assas­si­na­tion.

“Inves­ti­ga­tors say the Aus­tri­an Far Right leader was near­ly four times the booze lim­it and trav­el­ling at more than twice the per­mit­ted speed when he lost con­trol at 88mph last Sat­ur­day.

But the mak­ers of his Volk­swa­gen Phaeton limo insist the motor is one of the safest in the world and should have sur­vived the crash in Kla­gen­furt.

The car giants yes­ter­day sent its own experts to exam­ine the man­gled wreck­age and search for signs it may have been sab­o­taged.

The Ger­man firm also sparked fury by link­ing the death of fas­cist icon Haider, 58, to that of Princess Diana.

The neo-Nazi chief careered off the road as he drove home from a boozy par­ty.

But the pro­mot­er of the par­ty has insist­ed he was not drunk when he set off.

VW spokesman Peter Thul claimed that some­one with access to Haider’s car key could have manip­u­lat­ed the limo’s electrics which con­trol the engine’s “brain”.

He said: ‘It is a fact that Haider was going too fast, but such a speed on that curve is not a prob­lem for the car’s physics.

‘The Phaeton and Audi A8 are the safest of all. You’d need the key to manip­u­late the elec­tron­ics, so some­one at a garage would have to tam­per with it.. . .”

“Limo Nazi ‘Mur­der’ Probed” by Bri­an Fly­nn; The Sun; 10/17/2008.

7. The Aus­tri­an polit­i­cal scene was shak­en by the dis­clo­sure that “fam­i­ly val­ues” man Haider was gay.

“There were rumors for years, but they were wide­ly ignored in Aus­tria, a con­ser­v­a­tive nation not much inter­est­ed in pry­ing into the pri­vate lives of its lead­ers. Now, griev­ing over the death of Jörg Haider, the charis­mat­ic far-right politi­cian, the coun­try has been forced to con­front direct­ly the ques­tion of his sex­u­al­i­ty after his polit­i­cal suc­ces­sor assert­ed that Mr. Haider had been ‘the man of my life.’

‘We had a spe­cial rela­tion­ship that went far beyond friend­ship,’ the suc­ces­sor, Ste­fan Pet­zn­er, a for­mer fash­ion and cos­met­ics reporter, said Sun­day in a high­ly emo­tion­al inter­view on Aus­tri­an Radio 3. ‘Jörg and I were con­nect­ed by some­thing tru­ly spe­cial. He was the man of my life.’ . . .”

“Aus­tria Con­fronts a Lead­er’s Sex­u­al­i­ty” by Dan Bilef­sky; The New York Times; 10/24/2008.

8. Con­clud­ing with an arti­cle about a defec­tor from the NPD–Ger­many’s top “neo” Nazi party–the broad­cast high­lights the defec­tor’s state­ment that the par­ty receives fund­ing from old Nazis still liv­ing in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. This is (in all prob­a­bil­i­ty) a ref­er­ence to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

” . . . He [Uwe Luthardt] said old Nazis liv­ing in South Amer­i­ca still donate to the par­ty and oth­er funds come from the stag­ing of skin­head-music con­certs.

He went on: ‘The sim­ple aim is the restora­tion of the Reich in which a new storm troop­er organ­i­sa­tion takes revenge on any­one who dis­agrees with them.’ . . . ”

“Neo-Nazis Plot­ting ‘Fourth Reich’ in Ger­many” by Alan Hall; Telegraph.co.uk; 2/26/2009.

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR #669 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates”

  1. Yikes:

    The New York Times
    Dan­ger­ous Radioac­tive Sub­stance Is Stolen in Mex­i­co
    By RICK GLADSTONE
    Pub­lished: Decem­ber 4, 2013

    Thieves in Mex­i­co have stolen a truck car­ry­ing a potent radioac­tive iso­tope com­mon­ly used for med­ical pur­pos­es that can be extreme­ly dan­ger­ous if exposed, the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency said Wednes­day, rais­ing fears that the theft involved a more sin­is­ter motive, like the man­u­fac­ture of a dirty bomb.

    The agency, the nuclear mon­i­tor of the Unit­ed Nations, said it had been informed by the Mex­i­can author­i­ties that the truck car­ry­ing the iso­tope, cobalt 60, had been stolen in the town of Tepo­ja­co, near Mex­i­co City, on Mon­day. The truck had been trans­port­ing the iso­tope from a hos­pi­tal in the north­ern city of Tijua­na to a radioac­tive waste stor­age cen­ter, the agency said.

    “The Mex­i­can author­i­ties are cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a search for the source and have issued a news release to alert the pub­lic,” the agency said in a state­ment on its web­site.

    At the time of the theft, the state­ment said, the cobalt 60 had been prop­er­ly shield­ed from expo­sure. How­ev­er, it said, “the source could be extreme­ly dan­ger­ous to a per­son if removed from the shield­ing or if it was dam­aged.”

    The state­ment did not elab­o­rate on whether the thieves knew what they were steal­ing. But cobalt 60 is one of the ingre­di­ents com­mon­ly cit­ed as a pos­si­ble com­po­nent of a dirty bomb, a com­bi­na­tion of explo­sives and radioac­tive mate­r­i­al.

    Coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cials, long con­cerned about dirty bombs, have said they are far more use­ful in spread­ing pan­ic than in actu­al­ly caus­ing casu­al­ties or sig­nif­i­cant health con­cerns. Some experts say the bomb part might not be nec­es­sary — sim­ply scat­ter­ing a radioac­tive iso­tope in a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed area would have the same effect, but the per­son deliv­er­ing the iso­tope would prob­a­bly receive a large dose.

    After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Unit­ed States went on a cam­paign to ensure that cobalt 60 and oth­er iso­topes com­mon­ly used in med­i­cine and indus­try were bet­ter pro­tect­ed against theft, so that they were less like­ly to be obtained for dirty-bomb use.

    A Unit­ed States mil­i­tary offi­cial said that while the Pen­ta­gon was mon­i­tor­ing the Mex­i­co sit­u­a­tion close­ly, the theft did not appear to be con­nect­ed to any ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty.

    “I would say we are con­cerned but not wor­ried,” said the offi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. “No indi­ca­tion at all this was ter­ror relat­ed – just sim­ple vehi­cle theft. It was used med­ical-grade mate­r­i­al on its way to a dis­pos­al site, so would have already decayed to the point that it would not be use­ful for a weapon even if it did fall into ter­ror­ist hands.”

    The offi­cial said the Pen­ta­gon was pre­pared to assist, if asked, but antic­i­pat­ed that if the Unit­ed States offered any aid, it would most like­ly come from the Ener­gy Depart­ment and the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency.

    In an online guide to radi­a­tion pro­tec­tion, the E.P.A. iden­ti­fies cobalt 60 as a sub­stance used in a range of indus­tri­al and med­ical appli­ca­tions, includ­ing radio­ther­a­py in hos­pi­tals. Large amounts of cobalt 60 are also used to ster­il­ize spices and some foods because its pow­er­ful gam­ma rays kill bac­te­ria and oth­er pathogens with­out dam­ag­ing the prod­ucts or leav­ing them radioac­tive.

    The E.P.A. guide also warns that cobalt 60 is known to cause can­cer. “Because it emits such strong gam­ma rays, exter­nal expo­sure to cobalt 60 is also con­sid­ered a sig­nif­i­cant threat,” it says.

    Indus­tri­al and med­ical users peri­od­i­cal­ly replace used cobalt 60 with fresh sup­plies because, as with all radioac­tive iso­topes, its emis­sions slow­ly weak­en over time; its half-life is 5.27 years.

    Mex­i­can news reports said the truck had depart­ed Tijua­na on Nov. 28 en route to a repos­i­to­ry 30 miles north­east of Mex­i­co City. When it stopped at a gas sta­tion, two armed men ordered the dri­ver out of the truck, tied him up and made off with the truck.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 4, 2013, 10:22 am
  2. Dou­ble Yikes:

    Stolen radioac­tive con­tain­er in Mex­i­co found emp­ty
    6:25 p.m. EST Decem­ber 4, 2013

    Thieves took car­go truck that was haul­ing obso­lete med­ical equip­ment con­tain­ing cobalt-60 used in can­cer treat­ment.

    MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mex­i­can author­i­ties have recov­ered a stolen car­go truck that was haul­ing radioac­tive med­ical waste, but a piece of equip­ment con­tain­ing dan­ger­ous nuclear mate­r­i­al was miss­ing.

    The truck, which was stolen Mon­day from a gas sta­tion in cen­tral Mex­i­co, was car­ry­ing a met­al con­tain­er of cobalt-60 head­ed to a nuclear waste facil­i­ty in the state of Mex­i­co, said Juan Eiben­schutz, direc­tor gen­er­al of the Nation­al Com­mis­sion of Nuclear Safe­ty and Safe­guards.

    He said radioac­tiv­i­ty has been detect­ed about a half mile from where the stolen truck and emp­ty con­tain­er were found in the state of Mex­i­co. Author­i­ties have cor­doned off the area.

    Though the con­tain­er is heav­i­ly sealed in lead, designed to be dif­fi­cult to break and to sur­vive acci­dents intact, he said it con­tains an amount of radioac­tive mate­r­i­al that could do seri­ous dam­age if opened.

    Direct expo­sure would result in death with­in a few min­utes, he added.

    “This is a radioac­tive source that is very strong,” Eiben­schutz told the Asso­ci­at­ed Press on Wednes­day, adding that it can be almost imme­di­ate­ly fatal, depend­ing on prox­im­i­ty. “The inten­si­ty is very big if it is bro­ken.”

    Eiben­schutz said there is noth­ing so far to indi­cate that the theft of the mate­r­i­al was inten­tion­al or in any way intend­ed for an act of ter­ror­ism.

    The mate­r­i­al could not be used to make a nuclear bomb, but could be used in a dirty bomb, a con­ven­tion­al explo­sive that dis­sem­i­nates radioac­tive mate­r­i­al, he said.

    Eiben­schutz did­n’t know the exact weight, but that it was the largest amount stolen in recent mem­o­ry, and the inten­si­ty of the mate­r­i­al caused the alert. Local, state and fed­er­al author­i­ties, includ­ing the mil­i­tary, are search­ing for the truck.

    The mate­r­i­al was used for obso­lete radi­a­tion ther­a­py equip­ment that is being replaced through­out Mex­i­co’s pub­lic health sys­tem. It was com­ing from the gen­er­al hos­pi­tal in the north­ern bor­der city of Tijua­na, Eiben­shutz said. The thieves most like­ly want­ed the white 2007 Volk­swa­gen car­go vehi­cle with a move­able plat­form and crane.

    The thieves like­ly did­n’t know what the truck was car­ry­ing, he said, and may have dis­card­ed the met­al con­tain­er, which he said is about a meter square.

    “If some­one finds a big chunk of met­al with radi­a­tion sym­bols all over it, they should noti­fy us imme­di­ate­ly and don’t open it,” Eiben­schutz said.

    The truck marked “Trans­portes Ortiz” left Tijua­na on Nov. 28 and was head­ed to the stor­age facil­i­ty when it stopped to rest at a gas sta­tion in Tepo­ja­co, in Hidal­go state north of Mex­i­co City, dri­ver Valentin Escamil­la Ortiz told author­i­ties.

    He said he was sleep­ing in the truck when two men armed with a gun approached about 1:30 a.m. Tues­day. They made him get out, tied his hands and feet and left him in a vacant lot near­by.

    When he was able to free him­self, he ran back to the gas sta­tion to get help.

    The truck has a GPS loca­tor but it was­n’t active at the time of the theft, Eiben­schutz said.

    Author­i­ties sent out an alert to six cen­tral states and the cap­i­tal, and Mex­i­can cus­toms offi­cials are on alert to pre­vent the truck from cross­ing the bor­der, Eiben­schutz said. The mate­r­i­al could not be used to make a nuclear bomb, but could be used in a dirty bomb, a con­ven­tion­al explo­sive that dis­sem­i­nates radioac­tive mate­r­i­al.

    All of the U.S. ports of entry have radi­a­tion detec­tors in place, and trucks cross­ing the bor­der are rou­tine­ly screened for radi­a­tion.

    There are an aver­age of a half-dozen report­ed thefts of radioac­tive mate­r­i­al in Mex­i­co each year, Eiben­schutz said, and none have proven to be inten­tion­al, mean­ing the thieves were not after the mate­r­i­al. He said in all cas­es so far, they were after the con­tain­ers or vehi­cles.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 4, 2013, 3:47 pm
  3. Phew!

    Stolen cobalt-50 found aban­doned
    By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ / Asso­ci­at­ed Press / Decem­ber 4, 2013

    MEXICO CITY (AP) — A miss­ing ship­ment of radioac­tive cobalt-60 was found Wednes­day near where the stolen truck trans­port­ing the mate­r­i­al was aban­doned in cen­tral Mex­i­co state, the country’s nuclear safe­ty direc­tor said.

    The high­ly radioac­tive mate­r­i­al was found in an emp­ty lot about a kilo­me­ter (a half a mile) from Huey­poxt­la, an agri­cul­tur­al town of about 4,000 peo­ple, but it pos­es no threat or a need for an evac­u­a­tion, said Juan Eiben­schutz, direc­tor gen­er­al of the Nation­al Com­mis­sion of Nuclear Safe­ty and Safe­guards.

    ‘‘For­tu­nate­ly there are no peo­ple where the source of radioac­tiv­i­ty is,’’ Eiben­schutz said.

    The car­go truck haul­ing the extreme­ly dan­ger­ous cobalt-60 that had been used in med­ical equip­ment was stolen from a gas sta­tion ear­ly Tues­day, and author­i­ties had put out an alert in six cen­tral states and the cap­i­tal look­ing for it. Police and the mil­i­tary joined in the hunt.

    The truck was tak­ing the cobalt to a nuclear waste facil­i­ty in the state of Mex­i­co, which is adja­cent to Mex­i­co City.

    Eiben­schutz said direct expo­sure to cobalt-60 could result in death with­in a few min­utes. He said hos­pi­tals near the area were asked to report if they treat any­one exposed to radioac­tiv­i­ty.

    ‘‘This is a radioac­tive source that is very strong,’’ Eiben­schutz told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press.

    But, he added, the mate­r­i­al pos­es no threat to human life if kept at least 500 yards (500 meters) away.

    Eiben­schutz didn’t know the exact weight of cobalt, but said it was the largest amount stolen in recent mem­o­ry, and the inten­si­ty of the mate­r­i­al caused the alert.

    The mate­r­i­al was used in obso­lete radi­a­tion ther­a­py equip­ment that is being replaced through­out Mexico’s pub­lic health sys­tem. It was com­ing from the gen­er­al hos­pi­tal in the north­ern bor­der city of Tijua­na, Eiben­shutz said.

    Before the con­tain­er was found, he said the thieves most like­ly want­ed the white 2007 Volk­swa­gen car­go vehi­cle with a move­able plat­form and crane.

    Eiben­schutz said there was noth­ing to indi­cate the theft of the cobalt was inten­tion­al or in any way intend­ed for an act of ter­ror­ism.

    ...

    You kind of have to won­der what the thieves were going for in the first place. “Hey, let’s hijack this truck! Nev­er mind, let’s ditch the truck and just take what’s in the mys­tery box cov­ered in radi­a­tion sym­bols!”

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 4, 2013, 4:34 pm

Post a comment