Security and Damage Potential of Commercial Radioactive Sources

The planning and execution of attacks with radiological weapons is well within the capabilities of both transnational and local terrorist groups. This refers to the illegal acquisition of the radioactive material, to the design of a weapon, and to the actual execution of an attack. In this pilot study, plausible attack scenarios have been developed based on medical and industrial sources widely used in Germany. Special emphasis was put on how such sources could be obtained by a locally acting terrorist group using criminal tactics. To this end, sources handling and daily work procedures in hospitals and companies were analysed to find weak points that could be discovered and exploited by terrorist groups. This led to recommendations for modest but visible security improvements. Based on our interviews with the staff of various facilities, we also call for a change of mentality of users and manufacturers to take into account not only safety but also more thoroughly security aspects of the use of radioactive materials. We also estimated, by means of simulations, the damage caused by a radiological attack using the sources potentially available within the country. None of the scenarios we investigated led to doses at the site of the explosion which might cause acute radiation effects. However, in some scenarios, an attack would result in the necessity of a potentially very costly clean-up of large urban areas.