Lost plutonium

The public should have been alerted that a radioactive substance was missing.

How plutonium was depicted in the movie “Back to the Future” was a joke. The fictional Doc Brown barely took precautions while using plutonium stolen from Libyan terrorists to energize a DeLorean time machine regulated by a “flux capacitor.”

In real life there’s nothing funny about this highly radioactive material.

Even in small doses plutonium is extremely toxic; exposure can lead to radiation illness and possibly death. If inhaled, plutonium can cause lung cancer. If accidentally ingested, the synthetic element could find its way into the blood stream and be slowly absorbed into the body.

So why wasn’t the public immediately alerted after two Department of Energy security personnel from Idaho lost a plastic-coated disc of plutonium in San Antonio? The plutonium was inside a travel bag that was stolen by someone who broke the window of their rented Ford Explorer parked at a Marriott hotel. That happened in March 2017. But the plutonium is still missing.

Also missing are a disc of radioactive cesium and several radiation detectors that were inside the SUV. The only reason the public knows about the missing items now is that their apparently inadvertent theft was reported by the Center for Public Integrity, which discovered a brief internal Energy Department report about the incident and later pieced that together with details from a San Antonio police report.

Maybe the Energy Department wasn’t trying to hide the theft of radioactive material, but that’s certainly what it looks like. So much so that Congressman Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, sent a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry asking for explanations.

There was no immediate response from Perry, which is somewhat irritating given the former governor of this state is being asked why he didn’t show due concern for the health of his fellow Texans. The plutonium was stolen about the same time Perry became energy secretary, but he’s been on the job long enough now to explain how toxic materials were so cavalierly left in a parked car. Was it standard procedure?

Castro’s letter asked for a list of all incidents in the past five years in which radioactive materials became lost in Texas. No doubt other states would like similar information. If Perry hasn’t, he should order a complete review of how dangerous substances are transported by Energy Department personnel and determine whether new directives need to be issued.

It’s doubtful that the San Antonio thieves knew what they were grabbing from the vandalized SUV. But the ease with which they obtained radioactive material is scary. Consider the lesson it provides would-be domestic terrorists. They would need larger amounts of plutonium than what was stolen in San Antonio to build a so-called “dirty” bomb. But highly carcinogenic plutonium could play a role in other plots.

In reporting the San Antonio incident, the Center for Public Integrity noted the disparity in how the Energy Department handles radioactive material, most of it used at military installations, and how the more transparent Nuclear Regulatory Commission handles largely civilian stockpiles.

The NRC each year publishes a tally of lost, stolen or missing radioactive material. The last year the Energy Department issued such a report was in 2009, when it said at least a pound of plutonium and 45 pounds of highly enriched uranium that had been listed as securely stored were in fact missing.

If there is any reason the Energy Department shouldn’t be just as transparent as the NRC about lost radioactive material, Perry needs to reveal it.

Critics of Perry’s selection by President Trump to become energy secretary noted his vow as a 2012 Republican presidential candidate to dismantle the agency responsible for monitoring the nation’s vast nuclear arsenal. But Perry had a change of heart during his Senate confirmation hearing last year and said he more fully understood and supported the department’s mission.

If that’s true, Perry should want to improve how the Energy Department operates. One easy step in that direction would be to make sure his employees know they should never leave plutonium inside a car in a hotel parking lot where it can be stolen.