CANADA: Radioactive devices disappearing at alarming rate

Original News Source

CTV.ca News Staff
Radioactive devices -- some of which have the potential to be used in terrorist attacks -- have gone missing in alarming numbers in Canada over the past five years.

At least 76 have gone missing in Canada over the past five years -- disappearing from construction sites, specialized tool boxes, and generally growing legs and walking away.

Now with the growing threats we are seeing in the news today this may shed some light on what may be in store for us in the up coming months.

From the article, it seems that this radioactive equipment is easily transportable and would be able to get across some of the less traveled sections of the Canadian border with some degree of ease.

I believe that the Canadian border is just as dangerous as the southern Mexican border in the U.S. With that in mind it would not be very difficult to pack some conventional explosives with this nuclear material.

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[edit on 5/7/2007 by Mirthful Me]

The construction site mention is a giveaway as to the type of Nookular device going missing.
These devices are in use day in, day out on most construction sites. They are used for determining moisture content and material density. The ones I used to service / calibrate contained two radioactive sources - Cesium 137 and americium 241 (if I remember correctly, it's been many years). These radioactive sources were extremely small and contained in hardened sealed capsules, embedded in the base of the units. In order to make a dastardly "dirty bomb" you'd firts have to extract the material from the hardened capsules - not an easy task, I've seen bulldozers run these things over and they remain sealed - then add to an explosive device. The explosive would then scatter the material over such a wide area you'd be more likely to soak up more radiation from a series of dental Xrays.

Still, makes for good headlines to scare the bejeezus out of folks.

Given the high cost of these devices it's more likley they've been stolen but are still being used on construction sites, sold to overseas construction companies or are propping up an overpass somewhere and the person who signed it out is claiming it was stolen

Great information Britguy. I've never worked on a construction site but I didn't have any idea what the type of market would be for anything with nuclear material.

You bring up an excellent point that it is just being sold overseas to a construction company for pennies on the dollar.