6 ms·

If something is that dangerous, shouldn't there be armored escorts, lojacks and all sorts of other security measures on it? Isn't it criminally liable to trans

by ck2 13y ago

If something is that dangerous, shouldn't there be armored escorts, lojacks and all sorts of other security measures on it? Isn't it criminally liable to transport something this lethal so carelessly? I mean people were ready to declare this a terrorist's dream of dirty-bomb material. We can't take more than 3 ounces of shampoo on a plane but actual dangerous stuff, no problem, just throw it on a truck.

kostyk 13y ago
We are talking about Mexico here right?
- ck2 13y ago
  Yes, the country bordering one of the most wealthy nations on earth.
  - leokun 13y ago
    Not sure what the significance of this observation is supposed to be.
    - ck2 13y ago
      Pick up phone, call DHS - hey you know how you have a $100 billion budget and are supposed to monitor transportation security? We are about to transport something highly radioactive near your border, just thought you should know. It would be the most closely watched transport ever. In fact I am curious why the NSA didn't know about it and tell someone.
      - seszett 13y ago
        The place where this happened it about a thousand kilometers from the US border. It is nowhere near the US, unless you somehow consider that all of Mexico should be monitored by DHS (and all of Canada too).
        nkurz 13y ago
        I agree with your sentiment, but although it was hijacked near Mexico City, 'nowhere near' seems a bit overstated: "stolen earlier in the week in a carjacking as the material was being moved from a public hospital in the border town of Tijuana to a storage facility in central Mexico, news reports said."
        tedunangst 13y ago
        Little known fact: The Constitution-free zone that extends 100 miles inside the border extends 1000 miles outside the border.
      - brazzy 13y ago
        > It would be the most closely watched transport ever. No. It would be one of thousands of such transports ocurring every year. A routine operation, not worth anyone's attention until the unexpected happened.
    - pacofvf 13y ago
      because of the condescending tone of "We are talking about México?", Mexico is the 2nd destination of US exports and the 3rd source of US imports, also is the 10th economy in the world by PPP GDP, also Mexico has facilities for enriching uranium, so I suppose that a Country like that must have regulations about radioactive material disposal.
      - leokun 13y ago
        It's also an unstable country in the middle of a fight it's not winning with tens of thousands of casualties a year. Parts of the country are not really even under government control. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War
        swalkergibson 13y ago
        Driven in large part by an insatiable lust for the currently illegal substances in the US. The US War on Drugs has disrupted tens of thousands of lives in the states as well as abroad. Mexico is like any other country, there are places you feel perfectly safe at night, and there are places where you don't.
        leokun 13y ago
        > Driven in large part by an insatiable lust for the currently illegal substances in the US. Totally irrelevant to the original point. This discussion isn't about blame, it's about why anyone is surprised at Mexico being dangerous. And Mexico is not like any other country. Journalists are regularly killed, people using Twitter to criticize drug cartels are killed and bodies are hung in public areas. Local governments and police live in fear. So no, it's not like any other country.
        swalkergibson 13y ago
        Your original comment argued that because the country was embroiled in a drug war meant that they could not possibly have effective measures for protecting radioactive material shipments in place. Pointing to a violent drug war to prove why they cannot safely ship radioactive material is disingenuous because their drug war is deeply entangled with ours. Your comment came off to me as follows, "those Mexicans can't even keep control of their country, so who should be surprised that this happened." That is what I take issue with. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but just flippantly declaring that there is a drug war without additional discussion is intellectually lazy, in my opinion.
  - seiji 13y ago
    Relevance? The Bay Area is one of the most wealthy MSAs on Earth, but it also has the highest homeless population complete with constant childish gang rivalries.
  - billmalarky 13y ago
    Aren't we a little over-extended already...
brazzy 13y ago
> If something is that dangerous, shouldn't there be armored escorts, lojacks and all sorts of other security measures on it? I think you underestimate just how common this and similarly dangerous chemical substances are. Every large hospital that does radiation therapy has this stuff. > Isn't it criminally liable to transport something this lethal so carelessly? You probably mean "criminally negligent", and I don't think the "standard of care" criterium extends to defending against malicious third party actions.
- inafield 13y ago
  And yet highway robbery is the dirty secret the transportation industry doesn't want people to know about. It's an increasing trend in the transportation industry to install hard/software that allows for better tracking and incident reporting. Everything from robbery to driver "safety" ratings and insurance investigations.
DanielStraight 13y ago
I suspect this kind of transportation is far more common than most people realize. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that "3 million packages of radioactive materials are shipped each year in the United States."[1] As for security measures: "The shipper must also meet the Department of Transportation's requirements for shipment of the nuclear material including route selection, vehicle condition and placarding, driver training, package marking, labeling, and other shipping documentation."[2] I suspect most of this was in place, or at least the Mexican equivalent. Nothing about armed escorts is mentioned for general transportation of radioactive material. For spent nuclear fuel, "armed escorts [are required] in heavily populated areas."[2] For another data point, here's a supplier of Cobalt-60's page on their safety: http://www.nordion.com/gamma/nordion_cobalt.html http://www.nordion.com/gamma/nordion_cobalt.html Again, there is no indication that armed escort would be expected, simply secure vehicles that won't leak radiation while delivering it or in the event of an accident. All that said, Cobalt-60 is used for sterilization of medical equipment, radiotherapy, food irradiation, and quite a few other things. It's probably not that hard to obtain if you really want it. [1] https://forms.nrc.gov/materials/transportation.html https://forms.nrc.gov/materials/transportation.html [2] https://forms.nrc.gov/materials/transportation/shipping.html https://forms.nrc.gov/materials/transportation/shipping.html
- ck2 13y ago
  Basically it sounds like a "dirty bomb" is not if, but when, someday. Lovely.
  - saalweachter 13y ago
    We're lucky that, as Bruce Schneier frequently points out with respect to airline hijackings, there really aren't as many terrible people out there wanting to indiscriminately kill hundreds or thousands as we all fear there are.
  - cstuder 13y ago
    According to the Wired article about the radioactive container in Genoas port (2011, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/ff_radioactivecargo/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/ff_radioactivecargo/al...), Cobalt-60 isn't the first choice for dirty bombs. There are nastier isotopes out there.
drrotmos 13y ago
One could argue that it's safer to transport the materials without the added attention from armored escorts, but they're probably just avoiding the added costs. They may actually be right to, though. The costs of an armored transport is higher than a regular truck transport by an order of magnitude. The costs of calling in the cavalry that one in a million time that the truck is hijacked is probably far lower than securing each transport. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be using lojacks and panic buttons for the drivers though.
- DaveWalk 13y ago
  > it's safer to transport the materials without the added attention from armored escorts A colleague of mine who once worked at a nuclear power plant said this is precisely the reason. Also, as mentioned below, this material, while decidedly dangerous, is considerably less so than, say, spent nuclear fuel, which is actually moved in giant police escorts. (Interestingly, they told me that some states actually refuse to have spent fuel trucked through their land, so often it has to be rerouted many hundred more miles between plant and destination.)
nate_meurer 13y ago
Yep. And why the FUCK was the transport container open-able by these jokers? From TFA: "The cobalt-60 was found, removed from its casing, in a rural area near the town of Hueypoxtla about 25 miles from where the truck was stolen."
- varjag 13y ago
  It's really hard to make a case that can't be opened with an angle grinder and a diamond cutter disk.
  - nate_meurer 13y ago
    Granted, but it's not hard to make a container difficult to open. Case-harden that bitch and add a lock. In the Goiania incident it took those assholes days to open the container.
    - speeder 13y ago
      But they still opened it. Nothing beats stupid and curiosity mixed (see: other brazillian scavender incident, where the guy found a bazooka rocket in a place similar to Goiania incident Cesium, and thought it was a good idea to disassemble it with a blowtorch, and ended exploding his entire family)
      - nate_meurer 13y ago
        Granted again. Maybe these car thieves carry an acetylene torch with them, but otherwise there's no excuse to transport this stuff in a container that can be opened by a couple of dipshits on the run in a stolen truck.
  - runjake 13y ago
    It's really easy to put a sticker on it that says "This thing is radioactive and will kill you if you open it!" or so goes the $5 wrench theory.
retube 13y ago
Pretty sure the lethality is being grossly over-stated for the purpose of sensationalism
- makomk 13y ago
  Not really, people have died from mishandling of this kind of radioactive material before: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull472/htmls/lessons_learned.html http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull472/...
- danbruc 13y ago
  111 TBq [1] and it seems like they carried it for more than half a kilometer after they removed the material from the shielding [2]. [1] http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/2013/mexicoradsource.html http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/2013/mexicoradsource.html [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25224304 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25224304

by ck2 13y ago

kostyk 13y ago

We are talking about Mexico here right?

ck2 13y ago
Yes, the country bordering one of the most wealthy nations on earth.
- leokun 13y ago
  Not sure what the significance of this observation is supposed to be.
  - ck2 13y ago
    Pick up phone, call DHS - hey you know how you have a $100 billion budget and are supposed to monitor transportation security? We are about to transport something highly radioactive near your border, just thought you should know. It would be the most closely watched transport ever. In fact I am curious why the NSA didn't know about it and tell someone.
    - seszett 13y ago
      The place where this happened it about a thousand kilometers from the US border. It is nowhere near the US, unless you somehow consider that all of Mexico should be monitored by DHS (and all of Canada too).
      - nkurz 13y ago
        I agree with your sentiment, but although it was hijacked near Mexico City, 'nowhere near' seems a bit overstated: "stolen earlier in the week in a carjacking as the material was being moved from a public hospital in the border town of Tijuana to a storage facility in central Mexico, news reports said."
      - tedunangst 13y ago
        Little known fact: The Constitution-free zone that extends 100 miles inside the border extends 1000 miles outside the border.
    - brazzy 13y ago
      > It would be the most closely watched transport ever. No. It would be one of thousands of such transports ocurring every year. A routine operation, not worth anyone's attention until the unexpected happened.
  - pacofvf 13y ago
    because of the condescending tone of "We are talking about México?", Mexico is the 2nd destination of US exports and the 3rd source of US imports, also is the 10th economy in the world by PPP GDP, also Mexico has facilities for enriching uranium, so I suppose that a Country like that must have regulations about radioactive material disposal.
    - leokun 13y ago
      It's also an unstable country in the middle of a fight it's not winning with tens of thousands of casualties a year. Parts of the country are not really even under government control. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War
      - swalkergibson 13y ago
        Driven in large part by an insatiable lust for the currently illegal substances in the US. The US War on Drugs has disrupted tens of thousands of lives in the states as well as abroad. Mexico is like any other country, there are places you feel perfectly safe at night, and there are places where you don't.
        leokun 13y ago
        > Driven in large part by an insatiable lust for the currently illegal substances in the US. Totally irrelevant to the original point. This discussion isn't about blame, it's about why anyone is surprised at Mexico being dangerous. And Mexico is not like any other country. Journalists are regularly killed, people using Twitter to criticize drug cartels are killed and bodies are hung in public areas. Local governments and police live in fear. So no, it's not like any other country.
        swalkergibson 13y ago
        Your original comment argued that because the country was embroiled in a drug war meant that they could not possibly have effective measures for protecting radioactive material shipments in place. Pointing to a violent drug war to prove why they cannot safely ship radioactive material is disingenuous because their drug war is deeply entangled with ours. Your comment came off to me as follows, "those Mexicans can't even keep control of their country, so who should be surprised that this happened." That is what I take issue with. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but just flippantly declaring that there is a drug war without additional discussion is intellectually lazy, in my opinion.
- seiji 13y ago
  Relevance? The Bay Area is one of the most wealthy MSAs on Earth, but it also has the highest homeless population complete with constant childish gang rivalries.
- billmalarky 13y ago
  Aren't we a little over-extended already...

brazzy 13y ago

> If something is that dangerous, shouldn't there be armored escorts, lojacks and all sorts of other security measures on it? I think you underestimate just how common this and similarly dangerous chemical substances are. Every large hospital that does radiation therapy has this stuff. > Isn't it criminally liable to transport something this lethal so carelessly? You probably mean "criminally negligent", and I don't think the "standard of care" criterium extends to defending against malicious third party actions.

inafield 13y ago
And yet highway robbery is the dirty secret the transportation industry doesn't want people to know about. It's an increasing trend in the transportation industry to install hard/software that allows for better tracking and incident reporting. Everything from robbery to driver "safety" ratings and insurance investigations.

DanielStraight 13y ago

I suspect this kind of transportation is far more common than most people realize. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that "3 million packages of radioactive materials are shipped each year in the United States."[1] As for security measures: "The shipper must also meet the Department of Transportation's requirements for shipment of the nuclear material including route selection, vehicle condition and placarding, driver training, package marking, labeling, and other shipping documentation."[2] I suspect most of this was in place, or at least the Mexican equivalent. Nothing about armed escorts is mentioned for general transportation of radioactive material. For spent nuclear fuel, "armed escorts [are required] in heavily populated areas."[2] For another data point, here's a supplier of Cobalt-60's page on their safety: http://www.nordion.com/gamma/nordion_cobalt.html http://www.nordion.com/gamma/nordion_cobalt.html Again, there is no indication that armed escort would be expected, simply secure vehicles that won't leak radiation while delivering it or in the event of an accident. All that said, Cobalt-60 is used for sterilization of medical equipment, radiotherapy, food irradiation, and quite a few other things. It's probably not that hard to obtain if you really want it. [1] https://forms.nrc.gov/materials/transportation.html https://forms.nrc.gov/materials/transportation.html [2] https://forms.nrc.gov/materials/transportation/shipping.html https://forms.nrc.gov/materials/transportation/shipping.html

ck2 13y ago
Basically it sounds like a "dirty bomb" is not if, but when, someday. Lovely.
- saalweachter 13y ago
  We're lucky that, as Bruce Schneier frequently points out with respect to airline hijackings, there really aren't as many terrible people out there wanting to indiscriminately kill hundreds or thousands as we all fear there are.
- cstuder 13y ago
  According to the Wired article about the radioactive container in Genoas port (2011, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/ff_radioactivecargo/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/ff_radioactivecargo/al...), Cobalt-60 isn't the first choice for dirty bombs. There are nastier isotopes out there.

drrotmos 13y ago

One could argue that it's safer to transport the materials without the added attention from armored escorts, but they're probably just avoiding the added costs. They may actually be right to, though. The costs of an armored transport is higher than a regular truck transport by an order of magnitude. The costs of calling in the cavalry that one in a million time that the truck is hijacked is probably far lower than securing each transport. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be using lojacks and panic buttons for the drivers though.

DaveWalk 13y ago
> it's safer to transport the materials without the added attention from armored escorts A colleague of mine who once worked at a nuclear power plant said this is precisely the reason. Also, as mentioned below, this material, while decidedly dangerous, is considerably less so than, say, spent nuclear fuel, which is actually moved in giant police escorts. (Interestingly, they told me that some states actually refuse to have spent fuel trucked through their land, so often it has to be rerouted many hundred more miles between plant and destination.)

nate_meurer 13y ago

Yep. And why the FUCK was the transport container open-able by these jokers? From TFA: "The cobalt-60 was found, removed from its casing, in a rural area near the town of Hueypoxtla about 25 miles from where the truck was stolen."

varjag 13y ago
It's really hard to make a case that can't be opened with an angle grinder and a diamond cutter disk.
- nate_meurer 13y ago
  Granted, but it's not hard to make a container difficult to open. Case-harden that bitch and add a lock. In the Goiania incident it took those assholes days to open the container.
  - speeder 13y ago
    But they still opened it. Nothing beats stupid and curiosity mixed (see: other brazillian scavender incident, where the guy found a bazooka rocket in a place similar to Goiania incident Cesium, and thought it was a good idea to disassemble it with a blowtorch, and ended exploding his entire family)
    - nate_meurer 13y ago
      Granted again. Maybe these car thieves carry an acetylene torch with them, but otherwise there's no excuse to transport this stuff in a container that can be opened by a couple of dipshits on the run in a stolen truck.
- runjake 13y ago
  It's really easy to put a sticker on it that says "This thing is radioactive and will kill you if you open it!" or so goes the $5 wrench theory.

retube 13y ago

Pretty sure the lethality is being grossly over-stated for the purpose of sensationalism

makomk 13y ago
Not really, people have died from mishandling of this kind of radioactive material before: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull472/htmls/lessons_learned.html http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull472/...
danbruc 13y ago
111 TBq [1] and it seems like they carried it for more than half a kilometer after they removed the material from the shielding [2]. [1] http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/2013/mexicoradsource.html http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/2013/mexicoradsource.html [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25224304 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25224304