WASHINGTON — The U.S. government’s decades-long effort to prevent terrorists from building nuclear weapons has officially added a new dimension: keeping radioactive materials used in commercial industries out of their hands as well.

The Department of Energy will lead a nationwide effort to remove certain highly radioactive materials from hospitals and other civilians sites, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, the homeland security adviser, said on Thursday during an address at the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, D.C.

“The challenge of reducing and countering the threat of a terrorist acquisition and use of a weapon of mass destruction is an existential one,” Ms. Sherwood-Randall said. “It has been on our agenda for decades, and it will persist as far into the future as we can see.”

“President Biden is reaffirming longstanding wisdom that reducing, eliminating and securing nuclear and radioactive materials continues to be the most effective means to prevent their acquisition and use,” she added.

Details of the new memorandum are classified. Previous versions of the policy focused on securing fissile material commonly used in nuclear weapons such as the ones the United States used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The effort focuses on specific radioisotopes that terrorists could potentially use in so-called dirty bombs — improvised weapons that use explosives to blast radiological materials into the surrounding area, potentially sickening or killing people and causing environmental harm.

In her remarks, the homeland security adviser said that medical devices for treating blood with X-rays — a process that makes transfusions safer — have traditionally used cesium-137 as the radioactive source to produce those rays, but that alternatives that use less dangerous materials now exist.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, which manages the largest public health care network in the country, recently removed all cesium-based blood irradiators from its hospitals, she said, and transitioned in October to machines that produce X-rays though different processes.

Radiological sources that are powerful enough to be deadly can also be exceedingly small and easily lost if mishandled.

In January, a small quantity of radioactive cesium-137 used in mining was reported missing in Western Australia, leading authorities to launch a large-scale search involving the defense force, emergency services and radiation experts. Smaller than a penny, the silver cylinder was recovered after an intensive six-day search.

It was powerful enough that anyone standing about three feet from it would receive the equivalent radioactive dose of 10 medical X-rays after one hour, and longer exposures could lead to skin burns and eventually acute radiation sickness.

Yan Zhuang contributed reporting.

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