Lawmakers say ease of access to radiological material requires immediate action by NRC

Leaders from the House Committees on Energy & Commerce and Homeland Security joined forces in a letter this week to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), pressing for urgent action to close vulnerabilities in the oversight of radiological material purchases.

Spurring the letter was a covert investigation and subsequent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that showed the ease of evading radioactive material security controls. Despite — and in fact, in line with — NRC requirements for the sale of radioactive material, GAO was able to successfully create fake companies and forged licenses to procure Category 3 sources of radioactive material from two separate domestic vendors.

Category 3 sources, according to NRC description, are those most commonly used in fixed industrial gauges, like well-logging gauges. They do not tend to be fatal unless one were exposed to them, unshielded, for days or weeks, but their potential for permanent injury to those in contact is severe.

The GAO report detailed security gaps potentially exploitable by terrorists and other bad actors, which could, in a worst-case scenario, allow for construction and deployment of a dirty bomb on domestic soil.

“The possibility of nefarious actors being able to buy such dangerous quantities of radiological material should be a call to immediate action,” the lawmakers wrote. “The threat is real – a recent publication by the Terrorgram Collective, a Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremist group, claimed that dirty bombs are the ‘holy grail of terrorism’ and provided rough instructions on manufacturing a device using uranium ore. As law enforcement has recently been under threats of violence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security have observed calls for using dirty bombs against law enforcement, including suggesting the placement of one in front of FBI Headquarters. Moreover, officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration have assessed that bad actors are showing an increasing interest in making dirty bombs.”

At present, the NRC is hastening rulemaking to improve the verification process for licenses and to communicate vulnerabilities to manufacturers. However, the letter writers — E&C Chair Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Homeland Security Ranking Member John Katko (R-NY), Homeland Security Vice Chairman Ritchie Torres (D-NY), and Homeland Security Vice Ranking Member Michael Guest (R-MS) — argued the process would still be too slow. Instead, they urged the NRC to use existing authorities to immediately implement GAO’s recommendations and take action.