Washington DC (670 KBOI News) – Remember a few months back, when we told you about a sample of weapons-grade plutonium, on loan from the INL to Idaho State University, that’s been missing for 14 years? Well, it’s happened again.
Patrick Malone, a reporter for the Washington DC-based Center for Public Integrity, says two employees of the INL recently went to San Antonio Texas.
“Some experts from the Idaho National Lab, whose expertise is really keeping nuclear material from falling into the wrong hands, has a small sample of plutonium, and a small sample of cesium, stolen out of a rental car in San Antonio Texas,” said Malone. “They were taken in a smash and grab robbery.”
Malone says the samples were small, about the size of a quarter, which aren’t big enough to make a bomb.
But he says the scary part is that these kinds of things happen all the time, and in fact, there is enough missing plutonium and highly-enriched uranium from US nuclear labs to make about five bombs.
He said cesium is easier to get, and would be highly prized by terrorists to make dirty bombs.
