It seems Wal-Mart cannot account for 15,800 ”glow in the dark” exit signs. Not any “glow-in-dark-signs” but the radioactive kind! Made of a by-product from Nuclear Reactors called tritium, they have the potential to cause alot of harm.

If tritium is ingested, for example, by a child who breaks a sign with a hockey stick, it’s much more potent. If only 5 per cent of the tritium in a large exit sign is ingested, it would be equivalent to 208 years of natural background radiation, according to a report from the Product Stewardship Institute at the University of Massachusetts.

Even more alarming are the circumstances of this loss. As Wal-Mart auditted individual stores, it found more and more of the same. The audit eventually spread coast to coast, and last month Wal-Mart disclosed that 20% of it’s total radioactive sign inventory is missing! The geographic spread indicates that this was not a one-time error or theft. We are not talking of one large lot that has mysteriously gone missing. This raises the chances of a coordinated effort, one that purposely sacrificed speed in favor of concealment; that is, it would have been far easier to steal a truckload of signs but this would have immediately alerted authorities.

Security experts are alarmed for not only is tritium gas deadly (vs. radioactive materials found in other household items) it’s almost tailor made for a dirty bomb. And I’m not talking of the “ghetto dirty bomb”, a conventional explosion with radioactive traces added for the purpose of increasing the “shock value” & “fear factor”. A tritium gas laced bomb would actually increase deaths. 

“The problem is that because it’s hydrogen it can actually become part of your body,” says Shawn-Patrick Stensil of Greenpeace Canada. “The radiation doesn’t emit far, but when it actually becomes part of your cell it’s right next to your DNA.”

And what about exposure from thousands of signs dumped near a source of drinking water, or packed with explosives in the back of a truck that has been driven into a crowded building?

“I’m sure thousands of them would create a credible dirty bomb,” says Norm Rubin, director of nuclear research at Energy Probe in Toronto. “Most experts think the main purpose of a dirty bomb is to cause panic, disruption and expensive cleanup rather than lots of dead bodies. A bunch of tritium, especially if oxidized in an explosion, would probably do that job fine.”

And it gets worse!!! AS IF 15,800 missing radioactive components isn’t scary enough – their maker – Canadian SRB Technologies has sold almost 5x that amount to everyones favorite theocracy:

Tritium is also a component in nuclear warheads. In 2005, SRB Technologies got permission from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to export 70,000 of its tritium exit signs to Iran. Foreign Affairs Canada blasted the regulator for allowing shipment to a country that’s attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction. The shipment went through.

As a Canadian citizen & resident I wish I can say I was surprised but this is hardly news. For years our country seems to be more interested in selling Candu reactors & the materials required to run them & their by products than with the security of the civilized world. Wal-Mart Canada didn’t even have to do an inventory as the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission only requires that such items be marked radioactive (no licensing, auditting or listing required!). That’s right – no centralized list, no licensing, auditting or listing required! We know almost 16,000 such signs are missing from Wal-Mart in the USA, but there is no way to tell how many such signs have gone missing or have been sold directly too nefarious organizations in Canada!

Stensil of Greenpeace said it’s a strange way for a government to treat a radioactive device, but he’s not surprised. He said the federal government has always had lax rules when it comes to tritium, partly because Canada, through its Candu nuclear plants, is one of the biggest producers of the substance in the world.

Whole Story Here

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