From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Security of Radiological Material at US Medical Facilities Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Gene Aloise, Director, Natural Resources & Environment Related GAO Work: GAO-12-925: Nuclear Nonproliferation: Additional Actions Needed to Improve Security of Radiological Material at U.S. Medical Facilities Released: September 2012 [Background Music] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's September 2012. U.S. medical facilities commonly use radiological materials like Cesium 137 in their treatment of cancer patients. In the wrong hands, these materials could also be used to construct a dirty bomb. A group led by Gene Aloise, a director in GAO's Natural Resources and Environment team recently reviewed the security of radiological materials at U.S. medical facilities. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Gene to learn more. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Why is the security of materials like Cesium 137 a concern? [ Gene Aloise: ] Well, these are the materials that could be used to make a dirty bomb. Cesium 137, Americium, there's a whole host of these materials. And what the terrorists could is just wrap some dynamite around this radiological material and set that off in the middle of an urban center and you would have a terrible explosion. A lot of people would not necessarily be killed except those around the explosion, but the economic damage would be stifling. Some estimates go as high as $5 billion per incident. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And your team in this report identified some problems with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's requirements which are designed to ensure the security of or along high risk radiological sources. Can you talk about this? [ Gene Aloise: ] Yeah, the NRC has proposed guidelines and the're also proposing regulations to secure these materials in hospitals and medical facilities. Our concern is that this guidance is not specific enough. It just tells the hospitals and medical facilities to secure these materials, but it doesn't tell them how to do it. And the people working in these facilities are medical personnel. They don't have security training and they don't know how to secure them. They don't know what kind of cameras, what locks, gates, guards, guns, to put around these materials, so we believe that NRC needs to strengthen their guidance to make them more specific. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You also found a range of instances of poor security at the medical facilities you that visited. Can you give a few examples? [ Gene Aloise: ] Sure. I mean, I went into one facility and the radiological source was in a room, in a machine in a room with a combination lock on the door. However, the combination to the lock was written on the door frame so everybody could see it and obviously, that's a breach of security. There are other instances where we saw machines on a wheel pallets and these machines contained thousands of curies of radiological material. They were close to loading docks. Anybody could have pulled up a truck, wheeled it right out the door, and stolen it. And then there was another case and there's many more in the report that access to the radiological sources in hospitals is supposed to be restricted and in this one hospital, over 500 people had access to the room that contained a source with high levels of Cesium 137 in it. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You also looked at the status of efforts to upgrade security at these facilities. What did you find there? [ Gene Aloise: ] Right, what we found out was that the National Nuclear Security Administration has a great program to secure these sources. They put steel cages over them, they put them in rooms away from public access, they put stronger locks, stronger doors, bar the windows, alarm systems, all kinds of security enhancements. The trouble is with the program, it's voluntary, so out of 1,500 hospitals in the United States that have been designated as high risk, NNSA has only been able to do some 350 of them. And unless it's a mandatory program, it's good chance that many of these hospitals will never get their sources secured. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And given this and these findings, what is GAO recommending in this report? [ Gene Aloise: ] Specifically that NRC strengthen its guidance and regulations to be specific about what kind of security upgrades medical facilities should put in place. As I mentioned earlier, these are not security experts in these facilities. They need direction and training. And we're also, since this is a voluntary program asking NNSA to expand its outreach efforts to convince more hospitals to join into the program and NNSA pays for the upgrades. It's no cost to the facility, except they must maintain them, so you're talking about maintaining alarm systems and things like that. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, for taxpayers concerned about the security rightfully so of these potentially hazardous materials, what's the bottom line here? [ Gene Aloise: ] The bottom line is that terrorists do not have to smuggle this stuff into the United States. It's already here. We need this program that NNSA has to secure these sources because they are very dangerous and can be readily used to make dirty bombs. Literally, we are talking about a ticking time bomb. [Background Music] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional Watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.