Government investigators created a bogus company to obtain a license for radioactive materials that could have been used to build a dirty bomb, a report CNN has obtained shows.The report, to be the subject of a Senate hearing Thursday, exposed holes in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing system, which the NRC says it has since plugged.
Investigators with the Government Accountability Office altered the license and took initial steps a terrorist could have used to build a moderate-sized dirty bomb
Within 28 days, investigators created the bogus company without leaving their Washington offices and obtained a license to buy equipment containing nuclear materials. They changed the license to get access to an unrestricted amount of nuclear material and got commitments from two suppliers for machines containing radioactive material. From those machines, enough radioactive material -- americium 241 and cesium 137 -- could have been extracted to create a dirty bomb -- a non-fissile bomb that nonetheless would create chaos by distributing radioactive material over an area, congressional staffers said.
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