Re-examining the State of Radiological Source Security in Russia

Securing radioactive sources presents a unique and complex challenge due in large part to their diverse physical properties, applications, and operating environments. Considerably more prevalent than nuclear materials, radioactive sources are used throughout the world for medical, industrial, agricultural, research, and other purposes. Sources can be found both at hospitals in city centers, through which thousands of people pass daily, and at highly remote locations, where individuals or small teams use portable devices for a variety of industrial purposes. Over the past 75 years, Russia and the former Soviet Union have produced at least half a million of these individual ionizing radiation sources for domestic use, and since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has continued to serve as one of the world’s largest producers, users, and exporters of long-lived radiological sources. Although perhaps the ultimate security threat facing the world today is a terrorist organization procuring fissile nuclear materials for use in an improvised nuclear device, it is far more likely that terrorist organizations would manage to obtain radiological materials for use in a dirty bomb, which can have significant effects if used in areas of high population density