Brickbat: It's Around Here Somewhere

Coloradonative / Dreamstime.com

Two Department of Energy employees left radioactive material in their car when they stopped for the night at a San Antonio, Texas, hotel. The next morning they found their car had been broken into and the material stolen. It joins roughly six tons of nuclear material the government can't account for.

Comments

[maryrosie]

so sacary! I did not know this before I read your article fanfiction

[steve walsh]

Yeah, how in the world did the thieves know? Just a random robbery I guess.

[Inigo Montoya]

Some thief is right now wondering why he's vomiting, suddenly losing his hair in clumps, and somehow managed to get the worst sunburn he's ever had ?during night time.

[Wizard4169]

I'm pretty sure this is how you get super villains.

[Rossami]

The calibration samples that were stolen are about as dangerous as a grocery story display of bananas.

Sorry, but no one is turning into a supervillain based on this robbery.

[Agammamon]

That really depends on how stupid this agency is. Some calibration samples are pretty dangerous.

The article doesn't make clear whether or not the material they were there to retrieve was stolen also or if it was kept with them (or sent on ahead with a different group).

[Echospinner]

Or the smoke detectors in your house. Those have a radioactive source.

[Jerryskids]

Lab documents state that a month after the incident, one of the specialists charged with safeguarding the equipment in San Antonio was given a "Vision Award" by her colleagues. "Their achievements, and those of their colleagues at the laboratory, are the reasons our fellow citizens look to INL to resolve the nation's big energy and security challenges," Mark Peters, the lab director, said in an April 21, 2017, news release.

At the end of the fiscal year 2017, the Energy Department awarded the lab contractor that employed the guards assigned to pick up the nuclear material, Battelle Energy Alliance LLC, an "A" grade and described their overall performance as "excellent." It further awarded them 97 percent of their available bonuses, providing $15.5 million in profit, and in December 2017 the Department of Energy announced a five-year extension of Battelle's contract to operate Idaho National Laboratory, giving the contractor the job until at least 2024.

When government sends its people, it sends its finest.

[Hamster of Doom]

Oh, hey, that reminds me of something.

Texas Aquarium Kills Nearly All Its Fish

Aaaaand, a few months later...

Texas Aquarium Awarded Non-Profit Business Of the Year

[Hamster of Doom]

F'ing SF'ed the first link.

Dude.

SF. ...man, it's like, been a minute. Press F fo repeck...
And on with the show.

[Fist of Etiquette]

At least they managed to kill the parasite. I assume.

[Wizard4169]

Of course! If you kill all the hosts, how is the parasite supposed to survive?

[Agammamon]

Just the weakest ones. Now the remainder are stronger and out for vengeance!

[Kivlor]

Hahaha. Thanks for that Hamster. Reminds me of my who actually works as a researcher on this kind of stuff. She was telling me about a "sister lab" that is run by incompetent people, and how they kill all of the fish and samples that are sent. It's a fucking murder lab. She was really upset recently, because her lab was told to furnish them with a large sample of an endangered species, which they went out, caught and provided--an estimated 25% of the local population. They were all dead in a week.

[Kivlor]

should have said "my sister". Don't know how that got deleted.

[Hamster of Doom]

So, this was... something

The two news organizations took different approaches to obtain the e-mails. According to the documents, the AP made a sweeping request for "all emails sent or received" by Ashley Kavanaugh's Village of Chevy Chase email address.

By contrast, The New York Times is currently requesting that The Village of Chevy Chase Section 5 hand over "any emails to or from Ms. Kavanaugh that contain any of the keywords or terms listed below."

And what a list it is, including words like "liberal," "abortion," "gay," and "federalist," while also explicitly asking for e-mails containing the names of certain individuals.

Ooh, shiny buzzwords. And yet, if one checks the full list of requested terms, said lists includes 'judge', 'husband', 'democrat', 'republican', 'conservative', and 'liberal'.

Emailing some dude's wife is now public record... or some shit. I mean, like, I've emailed a lot of people in my day, but I rarely paid any mind to what their plus-ones did for a living.

It's a free country, you know. Hahahaha.

[Fuck you, Shikha (Nunya)]

That's fucked up.

[DaveSs]

The prime suspect

[Fist of Etiquette]

D'oh!

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

Well hell, would you want to spend the night with radioactive material in your hotel room?

[Longtobefree]

Times change.
Maybe we should give all nuclear handling back to the military?
I grew up in southeastern Virginia (a state now long gone) and we always knew when the missile subs were in port, or the Air Force was moving the nukes. Marine guards.

Random thought - did they check the pawn shops in Afghanistan?

[Rossami]

The linked article has an interesting graphic showing how much radioactive material it takes to make a bomb. What the linked article never mentions is that the amount of radioactive material that was stolen would require a microscope to see.

They were calibration samples - insanely small amounts that put out just enough radiation to confirm that your radiation detector is working properly. From a radioactivity perspective, they're about as dangerous as a grocery store display of bananas and considerably less dangerous than an old-fashioned glow-in-the-dark watch.

[Echospinner]

You would think the writers of the article would have at least checked with someone who knows something about radiation physics and detection equipment.

They talk about bombs. Too funny.

[Deconstructed Potato]

Oh good grief I hope this doesn't become another Barkon IV.