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Dirty bomb material disappears in transit in Michigan
[Zero Hedge] Radioactive material headed to Michigan from an Ohio company never made it to its destination, a filing by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed. In its "Current Event Notification" report for Wednesday, the commission that regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other civilian uses of nuclear materials in the United States said the Ohio Bureau of Radiation Protection had informed officials about a missing shipment involving Prime NDT Services.

The Ohio radiation bureau learned from Prime NDT that a source of Iridium-192
...which has a half life of 74 days...
was shipped through an unnamed carrier on July 12 from a facility in Strasburg, Ohio, to a facility in Michigan, the NRC said. Iridium-192 is a radioactive isotope of iridium, which can be used in industrial gauges that inspect welding seams in such equipment as pipelines and in medicine to treat certain cancers, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The material can also be used to make a dirty bomb.

According to the Detroit News, Prime NDT Services is an Ohio-based inspection company that performs testing services in the energy and industrial industries, many involving pipelines and other energy industry equipment.

The nuclear commission report categorized the isotope as a "Category 2" level of radioactive material, but did not specify the quantity of material that was being shipped or how it was packaged.

"Category 2 sources, if not safely managed or securely protected, could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them, or were otherwise in contact with them, for a short time (minutes to hours)," the report said. "It could possibly be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of hours to days."

According to the NRC classification scale, Category 1 nuclear materials are for strategic uses and include quantities in excess of 5 kilograms of uranium 235 or uranium-233 or 2 kilograms of plutonium. Five kilograms equals slightly more than 11 pounds. Think plutonium which Doc Brown stole from the Libyans.

Category 2 materials contain more than 1,000 grams of U-235 or more than 500 grams of U-233 or plutonium, or in a combined quantity of more than 1,000 grams. One thousand grams is equal to 2.2 pounds.

At the bottom is Category 3: materials would be those classified with more than 15 grams of U-235 or U-233 or plutonium alone or combined. Fifteen grams equals a little more than 8 ounces.

So here's the problem: "As of July 21, the source has not been delivered ..." the Ohio commission's notice to the NRC reads.

It was unclear how long shipping the material to Michigan would have been expected to take. The company is based in Ohio just south of Akron, but the Michigan delivery point was not specified. The carrier transmitting the material was redacted in the NRC notice.

The incident report refers to the shipment as a "Lost Source."

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Posted by: Shereth Shavirt9128 2021-07-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=608534