SECURITY FAILURES

Russia: In post-Soviet Russia of the 1990s, dozens of homegrown nuclear threats replaced nuclear war on the anxiety scale, and criminals found new ways to settle scores using deadly radioactive material.

In Moscow alone, a company director was killed by his chair, which had been secretly implanted with a radioactive device. And an apartment owner was arrested when his building was pulsing with radiation from a powerful radioactive isotope he had stored there then buried in a leaky container in a nearby pond.

But most alarmingly, Alexander Mihailov of the Russian Counter-Intelligence Service told the Star, “Russia is a broken nuclear state.”

After more than two decades of cooperation with the United States, the security of Russia’s nuclear materials has improved, but it and other former Soviet countries are still targeted by numerous thefts of loose nuclear material, and trafficking is reportedly increasing.

Canada: From 2012 to 2015, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission reported 52 lost or stolen sealed sources of radiation or radiation devices. Only 15 were recovered.

Bolivia: In 2012, police seized 2 tons of uranium stored in a building near the U.S. Embassy in the capital La Paz.

Britain: In 2006, former Soviet spy Alexander Litvenenko died from drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium, in what was called “a nuclear attack on London.”

Egypt: In 2012, a container of radioactive material was stolen from the Dabaa nuclear power plant construction site in northern Egypt.

France: In 2010 and 2011, there was a rash of thefts of highly toxic nuclear isotope sources, including cobalt-57, krypton-85, americium-241 and cadmium-109.

Germany: In 2011, 2,300 low-enriched uranium and thorium fuel elements used in high-temperature nuclear reactors disappeared from a research centre near the Dutch border.

Romania: In 2011, cylinders containing 73 kilograms of uranium ore intended for reprocessing were stolen from a storage depot in Transylvania.

Namibia: In 2011, two employees and a member of the Namibian Defense forces stole 170 kilograms of powdered uranium from the Rossing Uranium Mine and were arrested in a sting operation. Source: IEFA’s Incident and Trafficking Database