Nuclear materials stolen from Texas motel parking lot last year are still missing

Read Story Transcript

Small amounts of dangerous nuclear materials owned by the U.S. Department of Energy were stolen from a rental car in a hotel parking lot last year, never to be seen again, according to a report by a non-profit investigative news organization.

According to police reports unearthed by the Centre for Public Integrity, two officials at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017 to retrieve dangerous materials from a research lab.

They were tasked with "making sure that every last iota of nuclear material ... is accounted for and that none of it is stolen or falls into the wrong hands," Patrick Malone, who co-authored the report with R. Jeffrey Smith, told As It Happens guest host Laura Lynch.

To complete the job, they brought along radiation detectors and small samples of nuclear materials to calibrate them. 

On their way, the officials stopped at a Marriott hotel and left their supplies overnight in their rental car. When they got up the next morning, the car windows were smashed and the materials were gone.

It was one of 87 reported thefts at that hotel and its parking lot that year, according to police data. 

"It boils down to simple carelessness," Malone said.

Plutonium stolen  

The stolen samples included a plastic-covered disk of plutonium, an extremely dangerous material that fuels nuclear weapons, and another of cesium, an ingredient in so-called "dirty" bombs. 

However, the amount of plutonium and cesium contained in the disks was deemed too small to pose a public health risk.

To this day, authorities have no idea where those materials are. 

"They're no closer today to knowing whether this was an opportunistic act by someone who didn't know what they were taking, or a deliberate act by someone who was trying to accumulate enough to do some harm by getting little bits in dribs and drabs," Malone said. 

The theft was never reported to the public, but CPI obtained a police report about it through an Freedom of Information request.

The DOE declined to to comment, but confirmed the theft in an email to As It Happens.

The investigation is now in the hands of local law enforcement.

Carlos Ortiz, spokesman for the San Antonio police, told CPI that laboratory officials ensured them the samples did not not add up to "an important or dangerous" amount.

Idaho lab spokeswoman Sarah Neumann echoed that sentiment, saying the plutonium sample was far too small to create a nuclear bomb.

But Malone says that doesn't excuse this type of mistake from officials in charge of safeguarding dangerous government-owned materials. 

"Like so many of us in our jobs, we have days where we're complacent," he said.

"The difference in this case is there's an international microscope on this particular program that we have basically recommended every nation in the world emulate."

A history of missing nuclear materials 

Both U.S. President Donald Trump and former president Barack Obama have boasted on the international stage about the safety of America's nuclear program.

But the CPI investigation found that nuclear materials do go missing from factories, storage centres, and during transit to research labs.

According to 2012 government figures reported by CPI, roughly six tonnes of U.S. nuclear material had been declared "unaccounted for" by the government as of 2012.

Those figures have not been updated and thefts are rarely reported, Malone said. 

"There are, in policy, things look great on paper, but in practice it's a lot more casual and a lot more laissez-faire," Malone said. 

"And this is a prime example of that."

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview with Patrick Malone produced by Imogen Birchard.