MOSCOW, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- First of two parts.
In the estimate of the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are millions of dangerous sources of radiation.
It seems, that are competing against natural sources - rivers, creeks, and springs, and not without success -- the word "source" is getting an increasingly negative connotation.
It would be appropriate to recall here the sacramental words of U.S. politician Donald Hodel, who described the world's nuclear successes as the walk of lunatics to a disaster. He seems to have got it in one. We have split the atom and tamed it for our own purposes, and now it is our moral duty to be responsible for it. But so far we have not shown much responsibility, and so we can expect more shocks like the British polonium incident.
Alexander Litvinenko has died, but his name is still much in the news, and we hear more revelations. The IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, reports that it does not control turnover of radionuclides because they are outside its sphere of monitoring. How could such an omission happen? One of the IAEA's tasks is to prevent proliferation of radioactive materials. The public was shocked to find out that the IAEA only controls nuclear materials, that is, those which are used in the production of a classic nuclear bomb. A dirty bomb, the terrorists' dream, is outside their control.
The IAEA registers illegal radionuclide trafficking only when it gets voluntary reports from the states concerned. Who wants to have additional problems? Meanwhile, radionuclides and other radioactive materials have spread so much that it will not be easy to establish rigid control over them. Moreover, it is civilian radioactive sources used in medicine, metallurgy, agriculture, mining, and machine building that are becoming more dangerous than strictly controlled nuclear facilities.
The IAEA reports that every year the world produces over 10,000 medical devices for radiotherapy and up to 12,000 industrial radiographic sources of radiation. It is indeed surprising that they are not under tough control of some international infrastructure.
Prof. Alexander Borovoi from the Kurchatov Institute Russian Research Center and former IAEA consultant on radiation, recalled a tragic incident which took place in the Brazilian city of Goiania in 1987. Garbage removers found a medical device based on cesium-137 at a dump in one of the poorest areas. Having broken it, they saw a blue luminous dust. They decided that it was something very precious or even supernatural, and invited neighbors and relatives to have a look. As a result, 244 people received dangerous doses of radiation, and hundreds of others damaged their health to different extent.
Sources of radiation which are stolen, lost, or left behind by careless owners are creating huge problems. In its report on the safety of sources of radiation at its international conference in Vienna in March 2003, the IAEA acknowledged that a hundred countries had no effective control over sources of radiation for lack of relevant infrastructures. The IAEA has officially registered up to 300 cases of illegal trafficking in radionuclides since 1993. This situation is fraught with danger for the world community.
About 30 percent of radioactive sources are used inappropriately even in the most advanced countries, for instance, at 500,000 out of the two million nuclear facilities in the United States. The European Union countries are not doing much better. In the last 15 years, they produced 500,000 radioactive sources, out of which 110,000 are in use today. However, a quarter of these are being used wrongly, and their storage is not properly controlled.
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(Tatyana Sinitsyna is a commentator for the RIA Novosti news agency. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interest of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
