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Plutonium was stolen from government contractor’s car last year - yet the Energy Department has remained silent

The materials were stolen from a hotel car park in San Antonio in March 2017 

Mythili Sampathkumar
New York
Monday 16 July 2018 20:52 BST
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Employees of a contractor in charge of managing the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, where the US stockpile of nuclear materials is kept, had plutonium and radioactive cesium stolen from their vehicle in March 2017
Employees of a contractor in charge of managing the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, where the US stockpile of nuclear materials is kept, had plutonium and radioactive cesium stolen from their vehicle in March 2017

Plutonium disappeared from a US government worker’s vehicle last year and the Department of Energy (DOE) still does not know the whereabouts of the material.

Two government contractors at the agency’s Idaho National Laboratory were travelling to San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017 on official business when they left small samples of plutonium and radioactive caesium in the back seat of their car hire at a local Marriott hotel.

They were going to use the samples to calibrate radiation detectors and were there to pick up other “dangerous” nuclear material from a “nonprofit research” lab, the San Antonio-Express newspaper reported.

The car had been parked in “a high-crime neighbourhood filled with temp agencies and ranch homes” and when they woke the next morning, the vehicle’s windows had been smashed and samples gone, the paper reported.

The experts had been asked with bringing all the materials back to Idaho safely, where the US federal government maintains a stockpile of nuclear explosive materials.

A spokesperson for the Idaho lab said the amount stolen was not enough to create a weapon - that would require approximately seven pounds of plutonium.

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The DOE has not responded to a request for further comment but said in a report that it thought the Marriott car park was secure due to having walls on two sides and security guards.

However, the paper wrote the San Antonio police have a reported 87 thefts in that very car park from 2016 to 2017.

Local police spokesperson Carlos Ortiz said no useful fingerprints, video surveillance footage, or eyewitness accounts were found in its initial investigation.

He said they "should have never left a sensitive instrument like this unattended in a vehicle”.

It is unclear whether the contractors called local police or DOE and federal security first after the incident.

A spokesperson for the DOE contractor, a company called Battelle Energy Alliance LLC, confirmed to The Independent the company is “still part of the consortium [of companies] that manages the laboratory”, but declined to comment in more detail about its employees at the time.

According to the DOE’s publicly available financial reports, the company was given an “A” grade by the agency, had its contract extended to 2024, and made approximately $15.5m in bonuses.

It remains unclear whether its employees were following protocol in handling the nuclear material, which could also be used in a so-called “dirty bomb”.

The DOE has not immediately responded to a request for comment and had told the Express newspaper it would not comment on lost or stolen items due to national security reasons.

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