A general view shows the cooling towers of the Mochovce nuclear power plant on November 6, 2023 in Mochovce, Slovakia.A U.S. government watchdog group is worried that one of Washington’s nuclear agencies isn’t doing enough to study and prevent the economic impact of a nuclear dirty bomb.comes from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan group that studies various issues for Congress.
In the popular imagination, a dirty bomb would send radioactive particles high into the air where the wind would disperse them throughout a large area. In reality, most radioactive material is so heavy that it doesn’t travel very far. From 2010 to 2014, IsraelIsrael said it was conducting the tests as a defensive measure in order to practice cleanup and get an idea of what its effects would be. They weren’t great.
In the decades after 9/11, many government agencies got serious about shoring up shortcomings around security and regulations regarding nuclear materials. According to the GAO, however, the NRC hasn’t kept up. “NRC has not implemented 11 out of 18 actions we have recommended since 2012,” the report said. “NRC has not taken action to consider socioeconomic consequences in its decision-making criteria for determining security requirements for radioactive materials.
As evidence of the real-life impact of this dirty bomb fear, the GAO pointed to an incident that had nothing at all to do with explosives. In 2019, a government contractorcontaining cesium-137 at the University of Washington. This was an industrial accident, not a dirty bomb, but—according to the GAO—the economic impact was severe.