While
dirty bombs can spread radiation within a small location, they can also spread
fear beyond. And, ironically, materials may be available locally. Federal
agents and NYPD detectives closed down West 12th Street the week of June 28.
They entered a building and worked through the night as counterterrorism
detectives stood watch. Their mission was to unbolt a 4,000-pound, lead-lined
piece of equipment with enough radioactive material in it to make it a “dirty
bomb” concern. Their location was at St. Vincent’s Hospital. The officials
placed the cesium-137 blood irradiator inside an 8-foot-tall
hazardous-materials cylinder and loaded in onto a tractor trailer. Then the
semi, flanked by federal escort vehicles, set off on a secret cross-country
trip. It was not until they reached the storage facility in the “southwestern
part of the country” two days later that officials were given the OK to talk
about the mission. The big concern, according to a National Nuclear Security
Administration official, is that the cesium, in the wrong hands, could
potentially be used to make a “radiological dispersal device,” or left in a
place where a large number of people could be exposed to it. The efforts at St.
Vincent’s were unique, according to agency officials, because unlike most of
the facilities using radioactive materials in the city, the hospital’s forced
closure meant that something had to be done to secure the radioactive cesium,
about the size of a soda can, inside the machine.
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