Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Ben on July 16, 2018, 11:21:59 AM
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Interesting story. It most likely appears to be double digit IQ hood rats, who hopefully were carrying the samples around in their front pockets for a while. I'm curious about the rental vehicle. Was that supposed to be low profile? Otherwise hop a .gov flight to Texas and get picked up by a gov vehicle, or take the long drive in a gov vehicle. And maybe keep the stuff within sight at all times.
http://amp.idahostatesman.com/news/northwest/idaho/article214731995.html
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I recall that the nuclear material to build the first few Israeli nuclear weapons came from Material Unaccounted For from US nuclear production. After they built Dimona, the Israelis had their own production cycle.
You would think that with the Feds having the Nuclear Emergency Search Team capability, they could find the missing stuff from Texas, assuming that it is not being kept in a shielded container.
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I recall that the nuclear material to build the first few Israeli nuclear weapons came from Material Unaccounted For from US nuclear production. After they built Dimona, the Israelis had their own production cycle.
You would think that with the Feds having the Nuclear Emergency Search Team capability, they could find the missing stuff from Texas, assuming that it is not being kept in a shielded container.
They probably could, but as noted in the article, it was only enough for calibrating instruments. It's likely the Feds aren't interested in spending however much that would cost to find such a small amount of material.
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You would think that with the Feds having the Nuclear Emergency Search Team capability, they could find the missing stuff from Texas, assuming that it is not being kept in a shielded container.
I would think it was being transported in a shielded container. I'm not sure how much shielding it would take, but in college our 1 curie source (~16 grams of Pu239) was housed in what was essentially a modified 55 gallon drum. Of course, the drum included things like irradiation ports, but it was still pretty massive for a small amount of plutonium. The student lab at Argonne had just had their Pu source recalled - it was 10x larger than ours - so I don't know what that container looked like.
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They probably could, but as noted in the article, it was only enough for calibrating instruments. It's likely the Feds aren't interested in spending however much that would cost to find such a small amount of material.
Call it a practice run. Besides, there's a chance that either they'd be doing some locals a huge favor, (no telling how many smash-and-grab thefts that would clear, or possibly provide PC for a warrant the sheriff has been wanting for a long time) or find a fence with a collection of such things.