Radioactive material went missing in New Jersey earlier this month, fueling conspiracy theories that it could be linked to the mysterious drone sightings.
A piece of medical equipment used for cancer scans was shipped from the Nazha Cancer Center in Newfield on December 2 for disposal, but the ‘shipping container arrived at its destination damaged and empty.’
The device, known as a ‘pin source,’ contained a small amount of Germanium-68 (Ge-68) that is used to calibrate a medical scanner’s accuracy. If handled without proper gear, it can cause radiation poisoning.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an alert for the missing shipment deemed ‘less than a Category 3,’ meaning it could cause permanent injury if mishandled.
The danger with losing track of radioactive material is that they can be used to build bombs.
But experts have suggested that malicious actors would likely use more potent materials than what was lost in New Jersey.
The missing medical equipment has led many on social media to speculate that the drones flying over New Jersey may be the government trying to ‘sniff out’ radioactive material.
John Ferguson, the CEO of Saxon Aerospace, a drone manufacturer in Kansas, said that the only reason drones are flown at night is because they are ‘looking for something.’
‘My own guess is that these drones are not nefarious in intent. If they are, they are, but I doubt it,’ Ferguson said in a TikTok video.
‘But if they are drones, the only reason why they would be flying, and flying that low, is because they’re trying to smell something on the ground.’
Instances of missing radioactive material in the US are rare and typically involve small quantities used in industrial or medical applications.
The most recent was in 2023 when the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas reported that 10 radioactive seeds used for breast cancer scans had been stolen.
The previous instance happened in 2021 when a nuclear moisture density gauge containing radioactive material was reported missing in Durham, North Carolina.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in 2020 that the most common reason for stealing radioactive material was ‘a likely act of trafficking or malicious use.’
Abel Gonzalez, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency division of Radiation said: ‘When radioactive sources are used for diagnostic purposes — notably in nuclear medicine procedures — the amount of radioactivity used is small and again does not present an evident security threat.
‘However, there is increasing apprehension that radioactive sources could be turned into a terrorist tool — what [is sometimes call] a ‘dirty bomb.”
