Compensating Life Downwind of Nevada

Priscilla, a 37-kiloton atom bomb, was detonated June 24, 1957, at the Nevada Test Site. It was one of a hundred atomic bombs detonated at the site, exposing communities across the United States to radioactive fallout. 


Compensating Life Downwind of Nevada 

By Miki Meek

Claudia Peterson has a vivid memory from her 1950s childhood in southern Utah. She remembers watching a glowing orange ball move off the western horizon while she rocked back and forth in her swing set the summer she was four, and walking past piles of dead lambs during lambing season. Some had two heads, and others had no legs.
Peterson remembers men in tidy, black suits visiting her classroom at East Elementary School in Cedar City with Geiger counters—and feeling a sense of pride that she lit up the counter when they waved it in front of her face. They told her it was from dental x-rays, but she knew she had never had one. She recalls sixth grade when one of her schoolmates died of leukemia, and eighth grade when bone cancer took first her friend's leg and then his life.
But there's one thing that doesn't come to mind—the government ever warning communities like hers in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and much of the United States that they would be heavily exposed to radioactive fallout from atomic bombs detonated at the Nevada Test Site. Between 1951 and July 1962, a hundred atomic bombs were detonated above ground there, 23 of them were larger than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
And nobody told Peterson that the government would one day compensate her family for her father's death from brain cancer, but wouldn't extend that same apology to her sister and her own six-year-old daughter. They didn't get the "right" cancer. Neither melanoma nor neuroblastoma, a rare nervous-system cancer, made the government's list.
After years of failed lawsuits and legislation, the government finally offered compensation to downwinders—radiation victims downwind of the test site—with the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). However, since Congress passed the act, in 1990, it has been hotly criticized by those living in states surrounding the site for limiting compensation to certain illnesses, years, and counties. For claimants to pick up their $50,000 compensation check, which barely covers medical bills for some, they must have been physically present in areas around the test site for at least two years between 1951 and 1958, or during 1962. They must also have one of 20 eligible diseases, which are mostly cancers of primary organs.
"It's a slap in the face to think that money will bring back a loved one or a breast after being treated like a guinea pig. But it's a bigger slap in the face to the brother, cousin, or neighbor across the street whose illness didn't qualify," Peterson says.
Dennis Nelson, director of Support and Education for Radiation Victims, has helped downwinders file their RECA claims with the Department of Justice for the past ten years and has seen it become a point of frustration for many families, including his own. Born and raised in St. George, Utah, Nelson was seven when atomic bombs with names like "Charlie" and "Baker" began exploding less than 120 miles from his home. But with safe assurances from the Atomic Energy Commission, his family thought they were unaffected.
They continued to eat vegetables from a garden irrigated with water polluted from fallout dust and drink fresh milk from the farmer up the street. They were unaware that scientists would eventually show that radioactive iodine 131 often entered the food chain through milk from cows that ate contaminated grass or feed, and increased the risk of thyroid cancer.
The Nelsons' health eventually began to unravel. In a family of seven, seven different kinds of cancers were diagnosed, including colon cancer, which claimed his sister Margaret two years after RECA was passed. But it wasn't on the list of compensable diseases at the time. And when Congress did amend the list, adding six other diseases to RECA in 2000, the Department of Justice still had nothing to offer Nelson but a rejection letter. He is ineligible because the law permits only parents, spouses, children, grandparents, grandchildren, and survivors to file. Nelsons' mother died of a brain tumor and his father of lung cancer before his sister, who never married or had children.
"RECA is too little, too late," Nelson says. "They can call it compensation, but people are dying before they can even get it."
Salt Lake City resident Mary Dickson did not die after she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, but she still won't get compensated. Although it's an eligible cancer, Salt Lake County isn't among 21 qualifying counties in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, even though fallout hit it harder than some counties within RECA's boundaries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"I'm glad that some type of legislation passed, but RECA was still a huge compromise," Dickson says. "The fallout didn't just hit a confined geographic area around southern Utah and stop. You can't put a fence around it."
The first federal reports mapping fallout paths over Salt Lake did not emerge until seven years after RECA passed. However, when the number of eligible counties was increased slightly by the amendments in 2000, Salt Lake County was not added.
Fred Allingham, executive director of the National Association for Radiation Survivors, believes it's because these reports also showed that fallout drifted all over the United States, making room for congressional arguments that expanding the program further would be too costly. The year after the amendments were enacted, 3,828 claims flooded in, compared with 854 in 2000. These new claims quickly exhausted funds, and the Department of Justice issued IOU letters for several months until Congress appropriated more money.
Anyone who has lived in the contiguous United States since 1951 has been exposed to radiation, according to a CDC report. Fallout from the Nevada Test Site, combined with nuclear tests conducted overseas by the U.S. and other countries, could ultimately be responsible for an additional 17,000 cancer deaths. The National Cancer Institute also estimates that the Nevada Test Site alone may be responsible for up to 212,000 cases of thyroid cancer.
The Cold War-era nuclear bombs were only detonated at the test site when the wind was blowing north-northeast, away from major cities in California and toward sparsely populated regions in states like Utah, Montana, and Wyoming.
But fallout wasn't the Cold War's only hazard. Many Americans were left sick and dying of lung cancer and other diseases after working in poorly ventilated uranium mines, contaminated with high levels of radon gas and toxic dust. These miners are eligible for $100,000 under RECA if they have one of six lung diseases linked to radiation exposure and worked between 1942 and 1971 in one of 11 qualifying states.
However, some miners, particularly Navajo, are having difficulty supplying necessary documents, even though declassified reports show that the Atomic Energy Commission knowingly sent them into hazardous conditions. Since the beginning of 2002, Melton Martinez, director of Navajo RECA Reform Working Group, has helped 200 uranium miners file for compensation, but only nine have received it so far.
He says the act "culturally discriminates" against Navajo because it requires claimants to provide detailed medical and work history records that many just don't have. From the 1950s through the ‘70s, many did not utilize Western medicine nor did they receive pay stubs, because employers paid them under the table.
"The government never told us about radiation and now they are making us jump over these hurdles," Martinez says. "But that's hard for these miners to do when they're carrying an oxygen bottle, confined to a wheelchair, or taking 15 different pills a day to keep themselves going."
He also feels that the law is flawed because it doesn't compensate other populations that were exposed to uranium dust. Martinez's own family has been plagued with health problems from living near a uranium mine in Haystack, New Mexico, that remained open for 30 years.
The National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering, is studying whether there is scientific evidence to support expanding illnesses, populations, and geographic regions in RECA, and the report is due on June 30, 2003. However, Claudia Peterson is skeptical that the government will take responsibility for her sister's and daughter's death anytime soon.
It took 39 years after "Able"—the first bomb to go off at the Nevada Test Site, in 1951— for the government to acknowledge some fault. And it took ten years after RECA passed to add amendments that included a few more counties, populations, and diseases. Peterson says she doesn't know how much longer some of her elementary school classmates, family, and friends will be around to wait.
"We've watched how quickly the government has put together compensation for 9/11 victims, and that has been a tough one to swallow," Peterson says. "What happened that day was horrible, but they are so quick to recognize what someone else did and shove under the rug what they've done to their own people. We were considered a low-use segment of the population then, and we still are now."
RELATED LINKSRadiation Exposure Compensation Program
www.usdoj.gov/civil/torts/const/reca/
Go to this site to learn about RECA and download claim forms.
National Cancer Institute: About Radiation Fallout
rex.nci.nih.gov/INTRFCE_GIFS/radiation_fallout/radiation_131.html
This website lists the full 1997 report on exposure to iodine 131 from atomic bombs detonated above ground at the Nevada Test Site, along with fact sheets, a dose calculator, and state and county exposures.
A Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population From Nuclear Weapons Tests Conducted by the United States and Other Nations
www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/default.htm
Download the report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from this site.
National Association of Radiation Survivors
www.radiationsurvivors.org
This website offers a summary of issues and legislative history regarding radiation victims.
Nevada Test Site
www.nv.doe.gov/news&pubs/publications/historyreports/default.htm
Visit this site to read detailed, historical reports on nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site.
BIBLIOGRAPHYGallagher, Carole. American Ground Zero. MIT Press. 1993

Miller, Richard L. Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing. Two-Sixty Press. 1999.

Miller, Richard L. The U.S. Atlas of Nuclear Fallout From 1951-1962 Vol. I: Total Fallout. LEGIS Books, 2002.

Ward, Chip. Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West. Verso Books. 2001

Iodine-131 Fallout From the Nevada Test Site

	Iodine-131 Fallout From the Nevada Test Site In 1997 the National Cancer Institute (NCI) released the first nationwide study on exposure to radioactive iodine 131 (I 131), from 100 atomic bombs tests detonated above ground at the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s and 1960s. Rain, wind, and the food supply spread I 131 from these tests across the United States, with the largest deposits immediately downwind of the test site and the lowest on the West Coast, upwind of the site. Exposure to released iodine occurred mainly during the first two months following a test. After that I 131 disintegrated to harmless levels. Because I 131 accumulates in the thyroid gland, the NCI estimates that the fallout may have caused up to 212,000 cases of thyroid cancer in people who were exposed. The average cumulative thyroid dose to approximately 160 million people who lived in the country during testing was about two rads, about five times the radiation dose emitted by a mammogram. A rad is the measurement unit for the amount of radiation the body absorbs. The federal government recommends medical monitoring for people who have been exposed to ten rads or more. Americans were exposed to varying levels depending on their residence, age, and food consumption. People who lived in Western states to the north and east of the site, such as Colorado, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, and Utah, had the highest per capita thyroid doses, ranging from 9 to 16 rads. And children between three months to five years old in these high fallout areas probably received three to seven times the average dose for the population in their county because they had smaller thyroids and tended to drink more milk than adults. Milk was a major exposure vehicle because I 131 fell on pasture grasses and then was consumed by cows. But an estimated 20,000 people who drank goats' milk during testing were at an even greater risk because it concentrates I 131 more than cows' milk. Thyroid doses to these individuals could be 10 to 20 times greater than to residents of the same county, who were the same age and gender, and drank an equal amount of cows' milk. Other pathways included inhaling contaminated air or ingesting tainted leafy vegetables, cottage cheese, and eggs. However, the relationship between I 131 and thyroid cancer still isn't fully known. It makes up less than one percent of cancer cases nationwide each year and cancer registries do not indicate that fallout has caused an epidemic, although record keeping didn't start until the early 1970s. — Miki Meek
	© 2002 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.

Cancer claims from Attleboro atomic work growing

ATTLEBORO - Hundreds of former Metals & Controls and Texas Instruments employees who may have gotten cancer as a result of working at a nuclear fuel plant are pursing claims for compensation under a federal program.

More than 900 claims have been filed on behalf of ex-workers or survivors of those who worked at the Attleboro plant during the 1950s and '60s under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.

The Department of Labor-run program provides compensation and medical coverage to atomic workers who believe they developed cancer as a result of their jobs.

The total does not include another 252 cases referred to the National Institute of Occupational Science and Health under a separate category.

So far a total of $35 million has been disbursed to employees with one of 22 types of cancer who worked at the plant from 1952 to 1967. That includes $1.2 million in government-paid medical benefits.

An additional $3.7 million has been paid under the NIOSH program to those who worked at the plant in later years, but whose cancer was judged likely to be job-connected.

Many of the workers labored in close proximity to radioactive materials on Cold War military projects at a time it was feared conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union might erupt in nuclear war.

Some have compared the nuclear workers to the Rosie the Riveters of World War II, who kept ships, tanks and planes flowing to the front despite workplace hazards, housing shortages and little sleep.

Of compensation cases decided so far, about two-thirds of claims received from those who worked at the plant in the 1950s and '60s have been approved.

Under the parallel NIOSH program, which carries a higher standard of proof, only about 20 percent of those who filed claims were approved for compensation.

The former Metals & Controls plant manufactured nuclear fuel for the Navy and for government reactor programs beginning in the early 1950s and ending in 1981, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

About 90 percent of the compensation paid to date went to workers or family members of employees who worked in the 1950s and '60s, when atomic energy work was at its height.

A division of Engelhard Industries in Plainville conducted similar work during the 1950s and early '60s.

Texas Instruments, which purchased Metals & Controls in 1959, sold its Attleboro manufacturing campus in 2006.

The property, parts of which underwent extensive decontamination, was eventually turned into an industrial park.

As many as 6,000 people worked at the complex in its heyday.

The bulk of nuclear-related work was centered on a few buildings, but the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health was unable to find documentation confining the work to any one section of the factory comlex.

The Department of Labor classified the former TI property an "atomic weapons employer" site.

The federal government stepped up efforts to aid local atomic workers in 2010 by designating those who worked at the Attleboro plant from 1952 to 1967 a "special exposure cohort." The designation afforded them easier access to benefits without having to document precisely how much radiation exposure they received.

However, some former workers have complained that neither Texas Instruments nor the government adequately informed them they might be subject to work-related cancer or that there was a program available to help them.

Following a series of news stories in The Sun Chronicle and prompting by U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, the company sent letters to thousands of former workers informing them about the compensation program.

"My office is thrilled with the steady uptick in claims filed by former employees of Texas Instruments and their families," Kennedy said in a statement. "These workers deserve any compensation we can provide. We remain committed to working with any individual who needs help navigating the claims process and encourage folks to call our Attleboro office with any questions or concerns."

According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Metals & Controls and later TI made nuclear fuels used by the Navy, Air Force and civilian government reactors, as well as switches for Navy submarines that contained radioactive radium 226.

TI cleaned up the property in 1997 and received sign-offs from federal and state officials.

But the number applications for federal compensation from former employees has continued to climb as a result of publicity and mailings.

In January, the Department of Labor reported it had approved 301 claims by former workers and paid out a total of $26.2 million in compensation related to the Attleboro site. Another $768,000 went to pay medical bills of affected workers.

According to the most recent statistics, a total of 407 claims have been approved, with payments totaling $34 million. That doesn't count an additional $1.2 million in medical care.

In addition the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health portion of the program, which had paid $3.4 million on 29 individual claims as of January, has seen those totals rise to $3.7 million on 31 claims.

Since surviving family members, as well as former workers, are permitted to file claims, the total number of claims reported by the Labor Department exceeds the number of former workers whose cases are connected with them.

According to statistics published by the Labor Department, the 1,198 claims submitted to date under both programs represent a total of 883 workers.

Half Life—The Lethal Legacy of America's Nuclear Waste

A tank farm at Hanford, Washington, built in the 1940s, uses only single-wall tanks to store radioactive sludge from plutonium processing. Many of the tanks have leaked, tainting groundwater.

Photograph by Peter Essick

Half Life—The Lethal Legacy of America's Nuclear Waste

Written by Michael E. Long

Republished from the pages of National Geographic magazine

World War II was still being fought in the Pacific during the first week of August 1945, a time when my father and I were vacationing in Atlantic City, New Jersey, eating softshell crabs and lazing by the ocean. In a games arcade I fed nickels to a toy machine gun and fired at Japanese Zero fighters flitting across a screen. On the boardwalk, rifles shouldered, platoons of United States soldiers marched and sang:

The Stars and Stripes will fly over Tokyo,

Fly over Tokyo, fly over Tokyo,

The Stars and Stripes will fly over Tokyo,

When the 991st gets there̴.

One morning my dad showed me a newspaper with red headlines that said a huge bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered. The bombs were so big that the boys of the 991st wouldn't have to go to Tokyo after all.

The strong nuclear force, the binding energy that makes atomic nuclei the most tightfisted entities in all creation, had been sundered, unleashing enormous power—the equivalent of 15,000 tons (13,608 metric tons) of TNT in the Hiroshima bomb—as well as a race to create bigger weapons. Seven years later our first hydrogen device, code-named Mike, yielded a blast equal to 10.4 million tons (9.4 million metric tons) of TNT. Mike would have leveled all five boroughs of New York City.

By the mid-1960s, the height of the Cold War, the U.S. had stockpiled around 32,000 nuclear warheads, as well as mountains of radioactive garbage from the production of plutonium for these weapons. Just one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of plutonium required around a thousand tons (907 metric tons) of uranium ore. Generated from uranium bombarded by neutrons in a nuclear reactor, the plutonium was later separated from the uranium in hellish baths of acids and solvents still awaiting disposal.

A long-deferred cleanup is now under way at 114 of the nation's nuclear facilities, which encompass an acreage equivalent to Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Many smaller sites, the easy ones, have been cleansed, but the big challenges remain. What's to be done with 52,000 tons (47,174 metric tons) of dangerously radioactive spent fuel from commercial and defense nuclear reactors? With 91 million gallons (344.5 million liters) of high-level waste left over from plutonium processing, scores of tons of plutonium, more than half a million tons (453,592 metric tons) of depleted uranium, millions of cubic feet of contaminated tools, metal scraps, clothing, oils, solvents, and other waste? And with some 265 million tons (240 million metric tons) of tailings from milling uranium ore—less than half stabilized—littering landscapes?

For an idea of scale: Load those tailings into railroad hopper cars, then pour the 91 million gallons (344.5 million liters) of waste into tank cars, and you would have a mythical train that would reach around the Equator and then some.

In a decade real trains and trucks carrying high-level waste may head to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the government's choice, and a controversial one, for a permanent repository.

Texas Instruments Telephone Directly 1963 - Where is the Attleboro Directory?

Cancer claims from Attleboro atomic work growing

BY RICK FOSTER SUN CHRONICLE STAFF | Posted: Friday, August 9, 2013 3:15 am

ATTLEBORO - Hundreds of former Metals & Controls and Texas Instruments employees who may have gotten cancer as a result of working at a nuclear fuel plant are pursing claims for compensation under a federal program.

More than 900 claims have been filed on behalf of ex-workers or survivors of those who worked at the Attleboro plant during the 1950s and '60s under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.

The Department of Labor-run program provides compensation and medical coverage to atomic workers who believe they developed cancer as a result of their jobs.

The total does not include another 252 cases referred to the National Institute of Occupational Science and Health under a separate category.

So far a total of $35 million has been disbursed to employees with one of 22 types of cancer who worked at the plant from 1952 to 1967. That includes $1.2 million in government-paid medical benefits.

An additional $3.7 million has been paid under the NIOSH program to those who worked at the plant in later years, but whose cancer was judged likely to be job-connected.

Many of the workers labored in close proximity to radioactive materials on Cold War military projects at a time it was feared conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union might erupt in nuclear war.

Some have compared the nuclear workers to the Rosie the Riveters of World War II, who kept ships, tanks and planes flowing to the front despite workplace hazards, housing shortages and little sleep.

Of compensation cases decided so far, about two-thirds of claims received from those who worked at the plant in the 1950s and '60s have been approved.

Under the parallel NIOSH program, which carries a higher standard of proof, only about 20 percent of those who filed claims were approved for compensation.

The former Metals & Controls plant manufactured nuclear fuel for the Navy and for government reactor programs beginning in the early 1950s and ending in 1981, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

About 90 percent of the compensation paid to date went to workers or family members of employees who worked in the 1950s and '60s, when atomic energy work was at its height.

A division of Engelhard Industries in Plainville conducted similar work during the 1950s and early '60s.

Texas Instruments, which purchased Metals & Controls in 1959, sold its Attleboro manufacturing campus in 2006.

The property, parts of which underwent extensive decontamination, was eventually turned into an industrial park.

As many as 6,000 people worked at the complex in its heyday.

The bulk of nuclear-related work was centered on a few buildings, but the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health was unable to find documentation confining the work to any one section of the factory comlex.

The Department of Labor classified the former TI property an "atomic weapons employer" site.

The federal government stepped up efforts to aid local atomic workers in 2010 by designating those who worked at the Attleboro plant from 1952 to 1967 a "special exposure cohort." The designation afforded them easier access to benefits without having to document precisely how much radiation exposure they received.

However, some former workers have complained that neither Texas Instruments nor the government adequately informed them they might be subject to work-related cancer or that there was a program available to help them.

Following a series of news stories in The Sun Chronicle and prompting by U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, the company sent letters to thousands of former workers informing them about the compensation program.

"My office is thrilled with the steady uptick in claims filed by former employees of Texas Instruments and their families," Kennedy said in a statement. "These workers deserve any compensation we can provide. We remain committed to working with any individual who needs help navigating the claims process and encourage folks to call our Attleboro office with any questions or concerns."

According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Metals & Controls and later TI made nuclear fuels used by the Navy, Air Force and civilian government reactors, as well as switches for Navy submarines that contained radioactive radium 226.

TI cleaned up the property in 1997 and received sign-offs from federal and state officials.

But the number applications for federal compensation from former employees has continued to climb as a result of publicity and mailings.

In January, the Department of Labor reported it had approved 301 claims by former workers and paid out a total of $26.2 million in compensation related to the Attleboro site. Another $768,000 went to pay medical bills of affected workers.

According to the most recent statistics, a total of 407 claims have been approved, with payments totaling $34 million. That doesn't count an additional $1.2 million in medical care.

In addition the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health portion of the program, which had paid $3.4 million on 29 individual claims as of January, has seen those totals rise to $3.7 million on 31 claims.

Since surviving family members, as well as former workers, are permitted to file claims, the total number of claims reported by the Labor Department exceeds the number of former workers whose cases are connected with them.

According to statistics published by the Labor Department, the 1,198 claims submitted to date under both programs represent a total of 883 workers.

U.S. Can’t Track Tons of Weapons-Grade Uranium, Plutonium

U.S. Can’t Track Tons of Weapons-Grade Uranium, Plutonium

• BY NOAH SHACHTMAN
• 09.16.11
• 6:30 AM

President Obama has repeatedly said his top counterterrorism goal is to prevent terrorists from acquiring the building blocks to make nuclear or “dirty” bombs. In April of 2009, Obama announced a new international effort to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” Since then, the Department of Energy has dispatched scientists around the globe to collect hundreds of pounds of the stuff.

But according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), issued late last Friday afternoon to little fanfare, thousands of pounds of highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium remain. American officials may never get a chance to ensure its security.

That’s because the U.S. can’t track or fully account for 5,900 pounds of “weapons usable” nuclear material that it once shipped overseas. Instead, U.S. officials have to rely on foreign governments’ assurances that the potentially cataclysmic stuff is safe. And when those officials occasionally visit the sites holding the nuclear material, nearly half the places “did not meet International Atomic Energy Agency security guidelines,” according to the GAO, Congress’ investigative arm.

“It’s amazing how completely cavalier the Department of Energy has been at tracking this. They’ve got nobody who worries about this on a day-to-day basis,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons analyst at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (and occasional contributor to this blog).

The Energy Department, not surprisingly, has a different perspective. Foreign governments have pledged to report on the security of the their fissile material. There are international inspectors to keep those governments honest. And the GAO hasn’t reported that any uranium or plutonium has gone missing — just that certain guidelines may not have been yet.

“Between the International Atomic Energy Agency inspections and the reporting requirements, we think those safeguards are effective and internationally sanctioned,” Josh McConaha, a spokesman for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, tells Danger Room.

Starting in the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. sold 17,500 kilograms, or 38,5000 pounds, of fissile material overseas, mostly to help with civilian nuclear energy programs. Those sales came with conditions, however: countries had to keep the dangerous material safe; they couldn’t use it for weapons; and the U.S. had the option of taking back the radioactive stuff — someday, somehow.

But 12,400 of those 17,500 kilograms can’t be returned. It’s mostly in the hands — and reactors — of close allies like Germany, France, and Japan. 1,160 kilograms have been accounted for, and another 1,240 kg have been secured by the Energy Department’s “Global Threat Reduction Initiative,” an effort to covert nuclear power facilities from highly-enriched to low-enriched uranium, which is far less dangerous.

Still, don’t assume that just because the nuke material is at our friends’ houses means it is completely secure. One source familiar with the report’s development says, “If this was in some former Soviet republic, we’d be there in a heartbeat.” Some of America’s closest allies may be the ones with the poorest nuclear security precautions.

And there’s just one other problem. Subtracting all the nuke material that’s been accounted for and secured still leaves 2,700 kg — nearly three tons — outstanding. And that’s enough material to make dozens of nuclear weapons.

Where that uranium and plutonium is located — or, where it’s supposed to be located — the GAO report doesn’t say. That information was considered too sensitive to disclose in a public document, and was instead laid out in a classified report sent to Congress over the summer. But it’s worth noting that the U.S. currently has 27 so-called “Nuclear Cooperation Agreements” with 27 countries, from China to Ukraine to Colombia. America previously had similar deals with 11 other countries — including Israel, Pakistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Iran.

“Theoretically, we know [where the nuclear material is kept]. But we don’t have a good accounting of where it all is. We’re relying on them. We’re not, to coin a phrase, trusting but verifying,” the source says.

Occasionally, American inspectors will travel to these sites, to make sure these sites have the proper fences and surveillance gear needed to keep their nuclear material safe. The track record wasn’t particularly encouraging. Of those 55 visits conducted between 1994 and 2010, “physical protection teams found the sites met IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] security guidelines on 27 visits, did not meet IAEA security guidelines on 21 visits, and the results of 7 visits are unknown because the physical protection team was unable to assess the sites, or agency documentation was missing,” the report notes.

Partially, this alarming GAO report is an outgrowth of shifting standards. The U.S. is demanding more security and more accountability, to cope with a world in which terrorists have nuclear ambitions — and20 major atomic smugglers has been caught in the last two decades. Many countries haven’t caught up with those changes.

“The old way of doing business was: You bought it. We have some rights, but it’s fundamentally not our problem,” Lewis says. “Now, things are different.”