Coincidence?
Outcry as border guards seize British ‘dirty bomb’ lorry heading for Iran says the Daily Mail, reporting that a large quantity of caesium and Americium-Beryllium was seized at a border point on the way to Iran. Delivered from Kent. (HT USS Neverdock).
Previously, Gates of Vienna spent a few posts on the subject of Swedish anthrax, remarking that several tonnes of radioactive material has been stolen from sites in Sweden since 1990. Their quote singled out a ton of Beryllium that was stolen in 1995. The connections are probably dubious; there are cases of similar materials being stolen (fox news) more recently in places like Nigeria (When dictators aren’t rtrying to buy it from them, that is) but the fact remains that Sweden is a single 4 hour journey from northern England by boat, and it’s a route travelled by probably hundreds of trucks every day. Typically a truck will travel from gothenburg to gateshead, travel down the M1A to Leeds and then across the country to the M6, taking the M62. This motorway passes by Bradford, a convenient stopping point across the pennines and, rather coincidentally, a city with more muslims than any other outside London. I’ve seen Al Aqsa and various other terrorist groups openly recruiting outside Bradford City college and the University of Bradford where I study. It’s disturbing to see that black flag displayed so open. Large parts of the city are complete no-go areas for the police. Nearly all of the London bombers came from the Bradford-Leeds area.
Together all this makes a fairly disturbing picture. Americium-Beryllium is an alloy used in moisture detection in soil, amongst other things. It produced relatively low levels of gamma radiation and neutrons. In high enough concentrations it can be used as a neutron source, though it wouldn’t be very efficient, and it can be used material for a dirty bomb. It can also be refined to extract the americium, which is much more potent, though still probably not capable of producing a nuclear device.
All of this scaresd me. If I’m right, then I suspect the Iranians or some terrorist group are stealing radiactive materials and either laundering them through supposedly legitimate devices, or simply transporting them to where they can be used. A number of thefts of this material have taken place around the world over the last decade. It seems more than a coincidence that they should be happening just as Iran is attempting to produce a nuke…
