From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Security Risks Description: Data Breaches have affected hundreds of millions of Americans. GAO explores what we can do to better protect ourselves. Related GAO Work: GAO-19-468: Combating Nuclear Terrorism: NRC Needs to Take Additional Actions to Ensure the Security of High Risk Radioactive Material Released: April 2019 [ Background Music ] [ David Trimble: ] NRC needs to rethink its approach to risk analysis of its supplemental security regulations for radiological materials. [ Matt Oldham: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt Oldham. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is responsible for ensuring the security of radioactive material used throughout the United States. I'm with David Trimble, a Natural Resources and Environment director at GAO, and he led a report looking at how the NRC considers the security risks from radioactive material. Thanks for joining me, David. [ David Trimble: ] Thank you very much for having me. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, what are the security risks involved with radioactive material? [ David Trimble: ] Well, the risk that we've largely focused on in this report and the body of work we've undertaken the last few years has been the risk that these materials would be stolen or misused in a dirty bomb, which is also a radiological dispersal device. It's basically a conventional explosive wrapped with radioactive material that creates widespread contamination. If you think about the Boston Marathon bomber, that was a conventional explosive. If that had been wrapped in radiological material, it would have been a devastating dirty bomb. [ Matt Oldham: ] And, so what types of radioactive material are we talking about? [ David Trimble: ] Radiological material is used everywhere throughout the country. It has widespread uses in industry, it has widespread uses in medicine, so radiological materials we find in hospitals in every city in this country, as well as many industrial sites. [ Matt Oldham: ] How does the NRC consider security risks from this radiological material? [ David Trimble: ] Well, that's really what prompted this review. We were asked to assess whether NRC's analysis of risks when it's establishing its security requirements, whether that analysis was comprehensive. NRC regulates all radiological material and right now they issue health and safety regulations for all quantities of radiological material. They also issue supplement security requirements, but they only issue supplemental security requirements on the largest quantities of radiological materials, not all quantities of radiological materials. [ Matt Oldham: ] Earlier, you used the Boston Marathon bombing as an example and you said it could cause quite a bit of damage to life and property. Is that a small amount of radiological material in that example you're talking about, or the larger amounts that you're saying the NRC currently considers? [ David Trimble: ] That's a great way of phrasing it, and I think that's the $64,000 question. What our work found, and we convened a panel with the National Academies of Sciences of international experts on radiological security in doing this work. And what we found discussing with them as well as expert studies is that even a smaller quantity of some radiological materials can have huge socioeconomic impact. So, the smaller quantities that are not currently subject to security requirements can create big problems, and the scale of this, we're talking tens of billions of dollars in socioeconomic impact. And you can imagine in the Boston scenario, you have a dirty bomb go off, you have mass evacuations, you have large segments of the city that have to be decontaminated, you have impact on businesses. If they're residences, those people have to be relocated. So, the immediate and direct cost from that is tremendous. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] So, it sounds like, while there could be considerable threat to life and property if radiological material was weaponized, even smaller quantities of this material could have enormous impact. So, why doesn't the NRC pay as much attention to these smaller quantities? [ David Trimble: ] When we approached NRC on this, what emerged from our work is that when it's doing its risk analysis and setting its security requirements, it does not consider the socioeconomic impact of a dirty bomb. NRC's analysis is limited to looking only at the prompt fatalities or the immediate health effects that would occur from an incident. For a dirty bomb, there's a lack of logic to this approach in that dirty bombs, by their nature, do not produce prompt fatalities. They are weapons of terror, they are weapons of disruption, but aside from the explosive itself, the radiation from a dirty bomb would not cause a prompt fatality. Even if you had large quantities of radiological material and, in some cases, NRC pointed out to us in their arguments if you took all of the radiological material of a certain type in the country and put it in a dirty bomb and blew it up, it still wouldn't cause a prompt fatality. So, they've set the bar to a very peculiar place which almost precludes them from considering adding additional security requirements. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, what recommendations did the team have for NRC? [ David Trimble: ] NRC should begin considering socioeconomic effects in their analyses and one point on that that I should make is, this isn't an issue of limited legal authority. They have this authority under the Atomic Energy Act to consider these things. It was at their discretion not to consider these. We also had a recommendation to require additional security measures for smaller quantities of some of these materials. I should note that NRC disagreed with our recommendations. Their position was that the evidence we presented was not sufficient. We strongly disagree with that assessment. We stand by these recommendations. As I noted, much of our work was based on a international group of radiological security experts that the National Academies of Sciences help put together for us. It is also based on three studies by Sandia, the Department of Energy lab, which is one of the leading centers on radiological risks. So, we feel very strongly that our evidence is sufficient and believe that, given the information, the new information that we've developed in this report, it's really important for NRC to act on these recommendations. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, what do you believe is the bottom line of this report? [ David Trimble: ] NRC needs to rethink its approach to its risk analysis and re-examine the sufficiency of its supplemental security regulations for radiological materials. [ Matt Oldham: ] David Trimble is a Natural Resources and Environment director, and he led a GAO report on NRC's security assessments of high-risk radioactive material. Thank you for your time, David. [ David Trimble: ] Thank you. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at gao.gov.