When international experts on nuclear security studied the problem this year of “casual theft” of bomb-making materials from nuclear facilities, they came up with an unusual recommendation: Eliminate pockets on the workers’ uniforms.
Despite hundreds of billions spent on sophisticated theft-detection systems both here and in Russia, “pockets are definitely an issue,” says Matthew Bunn, co-principal investigator for the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “I can think of at least one case in which the nuclear material was carried out in a guy’s pockets.”
Mr. Bunn co-wrote a report that appeared in the spring 2013 issue of the Journal of Nuclear Materials Management that blamed insiders for “nearly all of the documented thefts of highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium…Like the casino industry, both pharmaceutical producers and distributors require pocketless uniforms.”
