UN Radioactive material reported missing in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian authorities are hunting for an industrial device containing radioactive material that is reported to have gone missing from a pickup truck on Aug 10, police and media said on Monday (Aug 20).

Authorities fear the device, which contains an unknown amount of radioactive iridium, could cause radiation exposure or be used as a weapon by militants, the New Straits Times daily said, citing unnamed sources.


The 23kg device, used in industrial radiography, went missing on a journey to Shah Alam, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the capital, from the town of Seremban, about 60km away, the paper added.

"Yes, there is a report and we are investigating," Mazlan Mansor, police chief of the surrounding state of Selangor, told Reuters in a brief text message. He declined to elaborate.

Two employees of the firm that owned the missing equipment were arrested but later released because of insufficient evidence, media said.

Any loss or theft of radioactive material could put it in the hands of militants who might try to build a crude nuclear device or a so-called "dirty bomb", the United Nations atomic agency has warned.

Such a device combines nuclear material with conventional explosives to contaminate an area with radiation, in contrast to a nuclear weapon, which uses nuclear fission to trigger a vastly more powerful blast.

Source: Reuters/ad
Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/radioactive-material-reported-missing-in-malaysia-10633938

 

[CWCissey]

Bring on the big dirty stinkin' bass bomb!

 

[TowinKarz]

My guess is it got stolen by scrappers, who will get their just deserts when they break it open.

Decades ago, one such man broke into a shuttered state hospital in South America, took off with the X-ray machines for scrap, and broke them apart at home to separate metal from other materials.

IN doing so, he broke open the capsules containing the radioisotopes that made them work and let that material out.

Even worse, he then gave them to his kids to play with since they glowed faintly in the dark....

The amount is substantially harmful to whoever is nearby when you open the lid, but nowhere near enough to irradiate a whole city without scattering it to the point it's undetectable.

The media goes apeshit whenever the word "radioactive" is in play, and it's infuriating.

Stealing brand-new stuff to scrap is endemic to the 3rd world, it's so bad the military has to cordon off plane crashes immediately, less the populace step over burning bodies to run off with free aluminum, or, has happened, scrap the flight recorders.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

My guess is it got stolen by scrappers, who will get their just deserts when they break it open.

Decades ago, one such man broke into a shuttered state hospital in South America, took off with the X-ray machines for scrap, and broke them apart at home to separate metal from other materials.

IN doing so, he broke open the capsules containing the radioisotopes that made them work and let that material out.

Even worse, he then gave them to his kids to play with since they glowed faintly in the dark....

The amount is substantially harmful to whoever is nearby when you open the lid, but nowhere near enough to irradiate a whole city without scattering it to the point it's undetectable.

The media goes apeshit whenever the word "radioactive" is in play, and it's infuriating.

Stealing brand-new stuff to scrap is endemic to the 3rd world, it's so bad the military has to cordon off plane crashes immediately, less the populace step over burning bodies to run off with free aluminum, or, has happened, scrap the flight recorders.

Have you got a source on this? I'm wondering what kind of machine those guys stole, because they usually don't actually contain radioactive materials themselves.
It's South Africa, though, so anything is possible.

 

[break these cuffs]

Have you got a source on this? I'm wondering what kind of machine those guys stole, because they usually don't actually contain radioactive materials themselves.
It's South Africa, though, so anything is possible.

It's known as the Goiania exposure/incident/whatever.

went missing on a journey to Shah Alam

Emphasis mine.

ISIS had been recruiting heavily in SEA before everything went south in Syria and Iraq. They had quite a few active and successful recruiters who operated on various secure messaging services out of SEA. A dozen Malaysian guys who returned from fighting in Syria got together and were going to carry out a terror attack in Kuala Lumpur a few years ago, but they were luckily stopped by law enforcement before carrying it out. Snackbars getting their hands on this is not out of the realm of possibility.

 

[Red Hood]

Great Scott!

I guess since they're building Deloreans again it was bound to happen.

 

[Piss Clam]

This is fear mongering. Only a block or two would be irradiate and the cleanup would be easier than Superfund sites in the US.

Same thing happens when people mention depleted uranium.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

This is fear mongering. Only a block or two would be irradiate and the cleanup would be easier than Superfund sites in the US.

Same thing happens when people mention depleted uranium.

Powerwash the dust down the storm drains and call it a day.

It's Iridium, a Platinum group noble metal, so its not super reactive. A bomb big enough to atomize it is going to kill more people with the blast than the radiation by a very large amount.

 

[CWCchange]

This is fear mongering. Only a block or two would be irradiate and the cleanup would be easier than Superfund sites in the US.

Same thing happens when people mention depleted uranium.

Financial districts of global cities tend to be a block or two, so even a "minor" terrorist attack could close everything for a while and cripple the world economy.

 

[Piss Clam]

Financial districts of global cities tend to be a block or two, so even a "minor" terrorist attack could close everything for a while and cripple the world economy.

Financial districts work off computer systems. You are not crippling them via a dirty bomb. What you are doing is sowing fear which we all know will drive the markets down for no reason other than human conditioning.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018...ctive-item-disappearance-180821080001781.html

Malaysia sees no terror link in radioactive item disappearance
Malaysian police said disappearance of an item containing radioactive material appeared to have no link to terrorism.

3 hours ago

Malaysia is looking for a radioactive device reported missing since August 10 [Getty Images]

Malaysian police have said the disappearance of an industrial item containing radioactive material more than a week ago appeared to have no link to terrorism.

"At this stage, there are no signs at all to link the loss of the [radioactive] device with any terrorist activity," said Selangor police chief Mazlan Mansor in a statement on Tuesday.

Authorities have been hunting for an industrial device containing radioactive material that is reported to have gone missing from a pick-up truck on August 10.

Two technicians reported the device missing while they were transporting it from the southern Negeri Sembilan state to their company's office in Shah Alam outside Kuala Lumpur, police said in a statement.

Authorities fear the device, can cause radiation exposure or be used as a weapon, the New Straits Times daily said on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

Not the first time
Police detained the two workers for a week to assist in the investigation but released them on bond as no evidence linked them to the device's disappearance.

Local reports have said the two claimed they did not stop during the trip and feared the device fell off the truck.

Authorities are working with the Atomic Energy Licensing Board to find the device and track the culprits.

Police did not say what they believe was the reason for the device's disappearance except to rule out terrorism.

However, while this event has created commotion among authorities, this is not the first time that such an incident takes place.

"This incident is not the first and it is understood that it also happened last year," Mohamad Fuzi, Inspector General of Police told reporters on Monday.

Police said the 23kg device was supposed to be used in industrial radiography, and it contains 50 curies of radioactive iridium that can cause health problems depending on the level of exposure.

Local media said the device was reportedly used to detect cracks in metals in the energy, power and transportation sectors.

 

[heathercho]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018...ctive-item-disappearance-180821080001781.html

Malaysia sees no terror link in radioactive item disappearance
Malaysian police said disappearance of an item containing radioactive material appeared to have no link to terrorism.

3 hours ago

Malaysia is looking for a radioactive device reported missing since August 10 [Getty Images]

Malaysian police have said the disappearance of an industrial item containing radioactive material more than a week ago appeared to have no link to terrorism.

"At this stage, there are no signs at all to link the loss of the [radioactive] device with any terrorist activity," said Selangor police chief Mazlan Mansor in a statement on Tuesday.

Authorities have been hunting for an industrial device containing radioactive material that is reported to have gone missing from a pick-up truck on August 10.

Two technicians reported the device missing while they were transporting it from the southern Negeri Sembilan state to their company's office in Shah Alam outside Kuala Lumpur, police said in a statement.

Authorities fear the device, can cause radiation exposure or be used as a weapon, the New Straits Times daily said on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

Not the first time
Police detained the two workers for a week to assist in the investigation but released them on bond as no evidence linked them to the device's disappearance.

Local reports have said the two claimed they did not stop during the trip and feared the device fell off the truck.

Authorities are working with the Atomic Energy Licensing Board to find the device and track the culprits.

Police did not say what they believe was the reason for the device's disappearance except to rule out terrorism.

However, while this event has created commotion among authorities, this is not the first time that such an incident takes place.

"This incident is not the first and it is understood that it also happened last year," Mohamad Fuzi, Inspector General of Police told reporters on Monday.

Police said the 23kg device was supposed to be used in industrial radiography, and it contains 50 curies of radioactive iridium that can cause health problems depending on the level of exposure.

Local media said the device was reportedly used to detect cracks in metals in the energy, power and transportation sectors.

Malaysia couldn't find a plane they "misplaced", they sure as shit aren't going to find this radioactive shit that just "mysteriously" disappeared.
Malaysia is an Islamic shithole.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

50 curies of radioactive iridium

This is a tiny amount. 0.005 gram of Ir192 or thereabouts. All the bullshit about 23 kg is about the device it was in that was heavy because of it's shielding.

Financial districts of global cities tend to be a block or two, so even a "minor" terrorist attack could close everything for a while and cripple the world economy.

Financial districts deal with terrorists and bombs and shit all the time. The only time I recall them being significantly disrupted was 9/11 and they got back to work quickly after that. The world economy wasn't "crippled" by it.

The idea that they are going to strap this to a bomb and do anything with it significantly worse than a normal bomb in a financial district is economic doomsday masturbatory fantasy.

 

[Bassomatic]

Get all giddy clicking news story, it's about as interesting as robbing an X ray machine on radiation fears level.

Damn you click bait.

 

[break these cuffs]

Malaysia couldn't find a plane they "misplaced", they sure as shit aren't going to find this radioactive shit that just "mysteriously" disappeared.
Malaysia is an Islamic shithole.

The kebab pilot purposely flew the plane into the middle of the ocean to kill himself and everyone else. The Malaysian government may have been incompetent and purposefully deceptive during the investigation, but it's extremely unlikely they would have found the plane even if they weren't. The ocean is big, planes are small, and the crash wasn't an accident. That said, just because police don't think the dudes transporting the radioactive material sold it to terrorists doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm not shocked that a Muslim news agency is reporting that representatives from a Muslim nation are saying snackbars have nothing to do with a fucky situation.

 

[Tranhuviya]

Re: the hypothetical bomb's lethality, wouldn't people at or around the site be irradiated?

 

[break these cuffs]

Re: the hypothetical bomb's lethality, wouldn't people at or around the site be irradiated?

If your asking about in the case of it going of? Yes, that's the point of a dirty bomb. If your referencing the people who would have to acquire material and build the bomb then; it's shielded in it's capacity as an industrial tool could probably stay in its shielded capsule even when rigged with an explosive device. The huehues in the Goiania incident punctured the cesium capsule with handtools. If it couldn't stay in its enclosure, I doubt the ISIS bomb maker or the dudes who're going to carry out the attack using it would really give a shit about a little radiation exposure before meeting their 72 virgins in a glorious aloha snackbar incident.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

Re: the hypothetical bomb's lethality, wouldn't people at or around the site be irradiated?

It's really technical. The Iridium is in a thin wafer weighing about .1 gram inside the device. They could remove it but would receive pretty high doses. They are either going to die or go to a hospital in the next day or two for that.

Ok, fine. Lets say they do that. They then have to disperse it. Forget dissolving it into a solution and spraying it. Iridium is a noble metal, so it hard to do. Forget crushing it into powder and mixing it into the explosive. Forget any of that shit. Fucking around for that long with an unshielded gamma emitter just isn't possible to do in a hidden shop or garage. You need a proper technical facility to do that. Around those place people tend to notice folks dropping dead from radiation poisoning.

The most bandied about option is just slapping it on a large stack of C4 and hoping for the best. Hoping the explosion is so violent it atomizes the wafer. But that doesn't work either. The wafer will mostly just break into pieces. Those pieces can then be picked up.

None of that shit will work the way it is portrayed in fiction. The risks of radiation exposure is highly dependent on time and nobody is going to hang around once that bomb goes off. Exposure is therefore going to be low for people at the incident site. Cleanup is going to be as difficult as picking up the pieces of the Iridium wafer (easy to find with a Geiger counter) with a shovel and putting them in a lead box, hauling debris to a special low-level radiation landfill (the ones used by nuclear power plants for tools gloves filters etc), and powerwashing the blast area and what little of the material was atomized down the storm drains. You are looking at a week to clean that up, at the very most.

Radiation exposure is going to be really low to the public and the people most at risk (the workers doing the cleanup) are going to be working with dosimeters so that they do not accidentally get exposed to dangerous levels by a hidden fragment.

How the media freaks the fuck out, shits their pants, and spins it into being Chernobyl part III is a whole nother issue.

 

[idosometimes]

"Dirty" bombs are not intended to be super deadly. The point is that "radioactive" and "nuclear" are really scary to regular people. How did they manage to get radioactive materials (which are literally everywhere and in your body right now)? How can we be sure that it contaminated area is thoroughly cleaned? Is it safe to return to place where bomb went off? If they can make this, does that mean that they can make an atomic/nuclear bomb?

Average person does not know anything about nuclear everything.