The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not keep track of some radioactive materials used in industrial equipment, but it should, and Congress should make it, the Government Accountability Office said this week.
That was one of the big takeaways from the office’s report, “Preventing a Dirty Bomb Nuclear Regulatory Commission Has Not Taken Steps to Address Certain Radiological Security Risks.”
“Since 2012, we have made numerous recommendations to key federal agencies that sought to enhance radiological security and reduce the risk of a dirty bomb,” the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) wrote in the report. “NRC, however, has not implemented the majority of our recommendations.”
Congress ordered GAO to write the report as part of a broader effort to see how well federal agencies are preventing bad actors from obtaining radioactive material to use in a radiological dispersal device, or dirty bomb.
Among other things, “Congress should consider directing NRC to…require that all category 3 radioactive materials and licenses be centrally tracked and all category 3 licenses be subject to stronger verification measures,” GAO wrote in its report.
Category 3 radioactive materials, according to NRC, are those that might permanently injure someone who was in physical contact with them for days.
Category 3 materials are sometimes present in industrial tools used by the mining, oil and gas and construction industries. Some gauges, for example, emit radiation to help engineers and designers measure a substance’s density by tracking how much of a known quantity of energy, released from a radioactive source, traveled through a substance.
GAO said that the NRC neither agreed nor disagreed with the recommendation that Congress pass a law requiring centralized tracking of category three material and licensees who are allowed to use them.
In a letter appended to this week’s report, NRC’s Mirela Gavrilas, the executive director of operations, said the commission’s “current regulatory requirements provide safe and secure use of radioactive materials, regardless of their category.”
