The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to implement a set of “priority” recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on securing radiological sources that could be weaponized.
Congress’ auditor issued its findings on April 17, part of a series of new reports on priority open recommendations at various federal agencies.
“Our April 2019 report, in combination with our previous reports on this topic, demonstrate that there are vulnerabilities in current NRC security requirements such as the risk of theft or misuse of these materials and that the potential consequences of misusing these materials could be significant,” Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who leads the GAO, wrote in an April 10 letter to NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki. “We encourage NRC to take action to implement this recommendation.”
The NRC licenses the use of radioactive sources for nuclear medicine, numerous industrial functions, and other purposes. In the wrong hands, the material could be used to build a “dirty bomb,” employing conventional explosives to disperse radioactive contamination in a contained area.
There is a five-tier NRC category system for radioactive sources: from Category 1 sources that can cause death within an hour of close exposure, to Category 5 sources that cannot cause any sort of permanent harm. In the middle are Category 3 sources that could cause permanent injury over multiple hours of close contact, but are unlikely to kill a person.
Two of the GAO’s recommendations date to a July 2016 report and involve Category 3 sources, which are generally employed in industrial gauges. In that document, the GAO said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should add Category 3 sources to its National Source Tracking System, along with placing licenses for those materials in the agency’s agreement states in the Web-based Licensing System “as quickly as reasonably possible.” An entity transferring Category 3 quantities of radioactive materials should also be required to confirm that the recipient has a valid radioactive materials license before completing the transaction, the 2016 report says.
Those recommendations were included in last year’s GAO letter on remaining priority recommendations to the NRC, Dodaro noted.
In the April 2019 report, the GAO said the NRC chairman should mandate increased protection of “high-risk” amounts of Category 3 radioactive material and evaluate whether other materials of this type require additional security. Agency staff should also be told to include socioeconomic consequences and evacuation-related deaths in setting security requirements for materials that could be employed in a dirty bomb.
In August 2017, an NRC working group recommended against the Government Accountability Office’s recommendations from the prior year. The commission has not accepted or rejected the third recommendation, from last year, and its working group has not issued a finding on the matter. The NRC rejected the fourth recommendation, “maintaining that the current regulatory requirements provide for the safe and secure use of all radioactive materials, regardless of category,” according to the GAO.
“The agency has already been working on the priority recommendations, and the staff review of that work continues,” and NRC spokesman said by email. He did not have a schedule for the agency to respond to the latest GAO filing.
The GAO also cited three other priority open recommendations at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: improving the reliability of cost estimates, bettering strategic human capital management, and establishing a strategy for cybersecurity risk management. The NRC has generally concurred with all three recommendations.
