The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), substantially expanding a key anti-terrorism initiative, says it plans to nearly quadruple the number of companies, hospitals and other users of nuclear materials that will have to report into a national tracking system for radioactive source devices widely used in industry, academia and medicine.
The agency, moving to address concerns that such devices could provide raw material for radioactive “dirty” bombs, says it is expanding the tracking system to cover so-called Category 3 and some Category 4 radioactive sources that previously were considered to pose significantly lesser threats than Category 1 and 2 devices, which contain larger amounts of radioactive materials or higher-activity radioisotopes, reports our sister publication Energy Daily.
The NRC is acting due to fears that terrorists might be able to gather sufficient numbers of Category 3 and 4 materials to accumulate a potentially dangerous amount of radioactive material.
“The NRC considers Category 1 and 2 sources to be the most significant from a security perspective,” the commission says. “Expanding the National Source Tracking System (NSTS) will guard against the possibility that a small number of Category 3 of 4 radioactive sources could be collected to form a Category 2 amount of radioactive material.
“The NRC believes the additional cost to the agency and [NRC nuclear material] licenses of an expanded NSTS are reasonable given the additional improvement in accountability and control of radioactive sources,” the commission says.
The commission’s action also follows a highly critical congressional report that suggests that the NRC is insufficiently vigilant in overseeing companies using Category 3 sources, thus potentially opening the door for terrorists to obtain material for a dirty bomb.
The new proposal would require reporting by 3,500 companies, hospitals, research institutions and other entities holding NRC and state licenses to use and store Category 3 and some Category 4 radioactive sources. Those licensees currently have nearly 17,000 radioactive sources.
The NRC issued an initial rule in November 2006 that established the NSTS and required reporting by approximately 1,350 licensees nationwide who possess an estimated 44,000 Category 1 and 2 sources in approximately 16,000 devices in use in the U.S. Those devices include irradiators, radiography cameras, well-logging devices, surgical equipment and radioisotope thermoelectric generators, among others.
The proposed rule would expand the NSTS to include Category 3 sources as well as sources in the upper range of Category 4–or sources with about one-tenth of the activity threshold for Category 3, the commission says. These sources include fixed industrial gauges (level gauges, conveyor gauges, thickness gauges, blast furnace gauges, dredger gauges, and pipe gauges); well-logging devices; medium- and low-dose-range brachytherapy devices; and certain radiography devices.
The tracking rule covers a surprisingly wide range of U.S. industry because radiation sources are used for many and varied purposes, including cancer therapy, food safety, sterilization of medical instruments, irradiation of blood for transplant patients, safety assessments of buildings, bridges and industrial equipment and exploration of geologic formations to find oil and natural gas deposits.
The NRC’s action follows recent reports by the National Academy of Sciences and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the auditing arm of Congress, suggesting that the commission needs to tighten its oversight of radioactive sources and help develop and promote the use of safer alternatives to Category 1 and 2 sources.
In a particularly embarrassing episode for the NRC, the GAO reported how GAO officials set up a bogus business that succeeded in getting an NRC license for radioactive sources, though the license only covered Category 3 nuclear materials, not the higher-risk Category 1 and 2 sources.
Nuclear material users covered by the NRC tracking system must report to the agency on the manufacture, transfer, receipt, disassembly and disposal of radioactive sources. Manufacturers of sources will be required to assign a unique serial number to each nationally tracked source and report the type and amount of radioactive material in each such source.
The tracking system will help the NRC–and the 34 states given authority by the NRC to regulate industry uses of radioactive material–conduct inspections and investigations and verify legitimate ownership and use of sources.