Can Terrorists Build a Nuclear Bomb? 737
kjh1 writes "Popular Science is just chock full of good articles this month. One in-depth article addresses the question many are afraid to acknowledge is a possibility - can terrorists acquire the raw materials and then deliver a nuclear bomb? A good read that explains the difficulty in doing all of the above, while pointing out calmly that it is still possible." From the article: "Most experts with whom I spoke said that a nuclear terror attack is plausible but not inevitable, and that there's no way to precisely gauge the odds. 'I don't think the public ought to lose a lot of sleep over the issue,' says nuclear physicist Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "
The curve of binding energy (Score:5, Informative)
Better link (Score:2, Informative)
The printer-friendly version of the article, with all the text on one page instead of spread out over 5.
Re:The curve of binding energy (Score:5, Informative)
The coral link (Score:2, Informative)
Re:dirty bombs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Even easier if (Score:3, Informative)
Re:dirty bombs (Score:5, Informative)
Dirty Destruction
A dirty bomb produces no nuclear chain reaction, no mushroom cloud. Yet its aftereffects could be devastating
By Michael Crowley
Although experts debate the ease of building a crude nuclear bomb, no one disputes that it is far easier to build a simpler weapon known as a dirty bomb--a conventional bomb that scatters radioactive material. A dirty bomb produces no nuclear chain reaction, no mushroom cloud. Yet its aftereffects could be devastating. In a 2002 computer simulation run by the Federation of American Scientists, a single foot-long piece of radioactive cobalt of the type commonly used in food-irradiation plants was blown up with TNT in lower Manhattan. The simulation found that a 300-square-block area would become as contaminated as the permanently closed zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and that cancer caused by residual radiation could be expected to kill one in 10 residents over the next 40 years. Under current U.S. safety standards, the entire island would have to be evacuated.
Unlike a nuclear bomb, a dirty bomb can be made from radioactive materials such as cesium, strontium and iridium, commonly found in hospitals and construction sites. Experts fret about security at such sites, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that because these materials decay quickly and only negligible amounts have been lost or stolen in the U.S., it's doubtful that terrorists could have accumulated enough to make even a single dirty bomb.
Dangerous amounts of material have gone missing elsewhere, however, and the U.S. is working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to inventory existing sources and, when possible, remove or lock them up. It's a monumental task, but the possibility of Manhattan becoming another Chernobyl makes it essential.
Re:dirty bombs (Score:3, Informative)
Try 15.000:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/722533.st
Hysteria? (Score:4, Informative)
After the cloud arrived, there were areas in Germany (esp. Bavaria) where you shouldn't eat (wild) mushrooms and venison anymore because of the radiation. And even today, almost 19 years after, it is not wise to eat too much of certain mushroom types. The joys of half-life.
If that's what you call hysteria, I'd like to get your definition of severity.
Re:dirty bombs (Score:4, Informative)
It depends on the size of the bomb. Really, you have the bomb explosion that causes the damage and the exposure to radiation likely makes the place the bomb exploded uninhabitable or at least undesirable. An explosion like the one in oklahoma city could probably carry the material a few city blocks at least.
Some links:
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,76873,00.html [foxnews.com]
BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2037769.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Overall, the number of casualties might not be that large but the psychological and economic impact could be huge.
If one if these went off in lower Manhattan, it could cost billions between lost business and people not wanting to go back to NYC.
I read the article before it was posted here on Slashdot, and the book Nuclear Terrorism. I have no doubt that terrorists could create a dirty bomb and if they had the resources and the time come up with a conventional nuclear weapon.
After all, if a teenage American boy [failuremag.com] could make a nuclear reactor [chron.com] in his backyard what makes you think terrorists can't make a nuclear weapon?
Re:Do they need to? (Score:3, Informative)
Usually exposing a larger group of people with enough radioactivity to make them sick will be able to jam the whole non-contaminated part of your medical system. And there are zip drugs against radiation sickness. The stuff you refer to is jodite which is supposed to block the thyroid gland in case of a nuclear indicent with non-radioactive jodite to prevent accumulation of radioactive jodite isotopes that will cause very likely thyroid cancer (one of the predominant causes of death after the Tchernobyl incident).
But this will not prevent your other radio-sensitive tissues like the ones inside your intestine to get severely damaged causing bleeding, extreme sickness and other unpleasant stuff. The production of new blood cells will be severely hit as your bone marrow takes a hit and dies. If you catch a high enough dose of radioactivity you will die. Period. No drug in the world can currently change that.
And from all that incidents with highly radioactive material disappearing all over the ex-Eastern block and from misplaced radioactive medical waste it shouldn't be too hard to get the respective material together.
Re:U-235 (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Even easier if (Score:5, Informative)
However, you are quite right that it would be incredibly expensive/complicated for a non-government group to obtain amounts of weapon grade uranium or plutonium sufficient for a critical reaction. And even if they would be able to build a nuclear bomb it would still be extremely hard to transport it to a place were it could be of any use for them (I know that it's in theory possible to build bombs the size of a suitcase, but it would be hard enough for a government to build such a device).
Surely the answer is "yes" but why would they? (Score:3, Informative)
"Gun type" - This was the way they built the Hiroshima bomb. Two bits of fissile material banged into each other using high explosive to form a critical mass. This only works with Uranium as plutonium bombs built using this method would "fizzle"- chain reaction kicks off before the core go's critical. Nobody makes bombs like this because of the inherent danger of accidental detonation- they could concievably go off in a crash or fire. The advantage of this type of bomb is that it's easy to make and you can be pretty sure it will go off ok (which is why they chose it for Little Boy).
"Implosion type"- a sphere of fissile material with a hollow in the middle is crushed into a critical mass using explosive lenses. This is much more efficient than the gun type due to the increased density and the detonation speed. Getting the high explosive lenses right is a real bastard though. The literatures pretty light on the explosive details strangely enough.
So, basically, your common or garden "building it in his cave" terrorist stereotype is going to have to go for the gun type. All the cross section and neutron transport data's available, you only need some world war II tech high explosives and machining ability and you're done. Thing is you're limited to highly enriched uranium.
Ok, so nobody's serious suggesting that any non-governmental group is enriching their own uranium (at least I hope not). So they have to aquire very high U235 content uranium from somewhere. Where's the only place you find this? Bombs. Basically I reckon that anyone in a position to sell terrorists material for a bomb is in a position to sell them one pre-assembled.
Re:Exactly. (Score:1, Informative)
I suggest you consult the HEW Archive [nuclearweaponarchive.org], especially US test tables [nuclearweaponarchive.org] and the USSR test tables [nuclearweaponarchive.org]. Note any test with a yeild below 1T (One ton) was a fizzle; a failure.
Re:dirty bombs (Score:3, Informative)
For the record, he never got far enough along to make a nuclear reactor, and most people say that he never would have been able to get that far, based on his financial limitations and limited access to materials.
It's a good story though, very interesting to the geek crowd.
Re:Exactly. (Score:3, Informative)
That's only true of plutonium-based weapons. Uranium is no danger radiologically, and no more dangerous than lead chemically (if a bit more flammable).
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Informative)
But, the dumb ass congresscritters and the majority of the US bought it and our so called liberal media legitimized it by not pointing out such fallacies.
Re:Even easier if (Score:5, Informative)
Well, given that Analog magazine published, in their April 1979 issue, a science-fact article titled "Build Your Own A-Bomb and Wake Up the Neighborhood!" which laid out in clear terms how to build a brute-force gun-type bomb, I'd have to say that the only limitation would be their ability to get enough bomb-grade nuclear material. Admittedly, the device is crude, and not transportable at all; it's essentially a two-story pipe mounted vertically in a building, with one hemisphere of nuclear material at the bottom and one at the top mounted on a heavy lead cylinder that can be dropped down the pipe. However, it's perfectly functional, and aside from the production of the two hemispheres, doesn't require anything more than basic handyman skills to produce -- the 'detonator' involving nothing more complex than pulling out a rod that keeps the upper cylinder from falling down the pipe, and getting someone willing to be there to yank out the rod probably isn't going to be a problem.
The article spends more time focussing on the problem of getting enough bomb-grade material from what was, at the time, the most accessible source of fissiles -- hijacking a truck full of fuel rods and refining the nuclear fuel to get bomb-grade material. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, it's probably a lot easier to get either the fuel or bomb-grade material directly, and getting an actual nuclear device eliminates all of the grunt work. Given the amount of effort needed to refine power-plant grade enriched nuclear fuel, the article suggested, IIRC, that a more effective use of the terrorists' effort would be to grind the fuel into a powder, take it up in a small private aircraft, and dump it out over a large city as they fly around, getting more effective distribution of the contamination. Additionally, spreading the nuclear material directly increases the cost to their target from the hysteria associated with a public announcement of the contamination and the government's attempts to clean it up, not to mention being able to repeat the attack once or twice using nothing more lethal than, say, table salt and still get the same hysteria and government reaction from the residents of the city you claim you've contaminated.
Re:The curve of binding energy (Score:3, Informative)
Moreover, he never said 'how bad nukes were' What he said (and what got him in hot water, thanks to that maniac Teller) was that we did not need to go on and develop the Super (aka the hydrogen bomb) because this was the unecessary step into an arms race.
Re:Exactly. (Score:4, Informative)
Saying "Don't listen to the President, he's overreacting"
a) doesn't sell as many papers or ads as screaming "WE'RE DOOOOOOMED!! WHO WILL SAVE US?!?!?!"; and
b) is unpatriotic, and as with being a communist, no-one wants to be accused of that
The media sensationalises, that's what it does. I'm not saying it's right, just that it shouldn't be a surprise. It doesn't help, of course, that this is a relatively technical matter, that the average journalist simply doesn't understand. Unless they're given enough time to actually research the story properly (in which case another paper/news show will beat them to it, and steal all the ratings and so advertising revenue) they'll just go with whatever makes the best headline.
Re:Terrorists? (Score:3, Informative)
Radioactive cobalt is easy to obtain (Score:5, Informative)
-
Radioactive cobalt dumped in vacant lot in Bangkok. [blacksmithinstitute.org] 3 dead, 12 injured.
-
Radioactive cobalt shows up in scrapyard in Turkey. [radcommsystems.com] Two injured cutting up the scrap.
-
Radioactive cobalt shows up in scrapyard in Brazil. [citizen.org] Four dead, 300 exposed.
-
Radioactive cobalt shows up in Mexico. [americaspolicy.org] Recycled into rebar and metal furniture. One known dead, injuries unknown. Discovered when some of the furniture was trucked to Los Alamos and set off radiation alarms.
And that's with the stuff in big chunks. "Weaponized", ground into a powder for distribution, it would be far more dangerous.Well, here's another one (Score:3, Informative)
Well, if you find that funny, I have another good one for you
The Poisson distribution was named after Simeon Poisson [wikipedia.org].
So the irony is doubled. Or standing on its head or something.
Re:looks like pakis have been surfing the web. (Score:2, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4242771.stm [bbc.co.uk] - and I quote
"The US has called Dr Khan the "biggest proliferator" of nuclear technology."
Country-specific proliferation by pakistan.
==============
Selling to Iran
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/khan
Selling to Libya
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4228713.s
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/khan
Selling to North Korea
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/khan
Other states that are not yet CONFIRMED include Syria, Saudi Arabia.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/pakistan/
In his startling televised confession Wednesday, Abdul Qadeer Khan insisted he acted without authorization in selling nuclear technology to other governments. A.Q. Khan admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. A.Q. Khan asked for clemency, but the Pakistani government made no public announcement about whether he is to be prosecuted. The confessed proliferation took place between 1989 and 2000, though it is suspected that proliferation activities to North Korea continued after that date. The network used to supply these activities is global in scope, stretching from Germany to Dubai and from China to South Asia, and involves numerous middlemen and suppliers.
Summary
=======
If you think that the chief scientist of pakistan could travel all over the world and SELL nuclear designs AND ENCASH the money AND SHIP the nuclear materials WITHOUT the permission of the government of pakistan, then the pakistanis are too stupid to be allowed to hold WMDs.
If the government of pakistan did allow the transfer of WMDs to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Syria, and North Korea, then they are too dangerous to be allowed to hold WMDs. (remember 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were saudis, and ALL were muslims).
Either way pakistan will be disarmed. Its too much of a basket case to allow them to have WMDs.
======
And as a dessert, let me finish by saying that the money for the 9/11 attack on WTC ($100,000) was transferred from Karachi (pakistan) to chief terrorist Mohammed Atta (saudi) by a certain ISI-trained Saeed Sheikh from Mohammed Khalid (kuwaiti). Saeed Sheikh was also responsible for the murder of Daniel Pearl cos Pearl had almost proven that the pakistani intelligence (ISI) was somewhat involved in WTC. Saeed Sheikh is currently in pakistani custody, but FBI/CIA are not allowed access to him. WHY would an "ally" not provide access to such a critically important terrorist ???? Khalid was caught in pakistan too and handed over to CIA but khalid is not pakistani and hence did not know the internals of the ISI involvement.
http://billstclair.com/911timeline/main/essaysaee
Of course, your beloved pakistan is a "stauch ally". yeah fuck right!
decent links (Score:2, Informative)
There's a general article at
How Stuff Works [howstuffworks.com].
A study of several cases at
Federation of American Scientists [fas.org]. Death rates will depend a lot on the thresholds for closing an area and moving people out. Meaning that cancer rates climb but not enough to evacuate the area. I think the numbers in the FAS article assume people stick around. Say rich people move out, poor people move in. FAS death rate numbers assume more things. Like no advance in cancer treatment in the next 40 years. And little protective measures.
And an article at
American Institute of Physics [aip.org] that says don't make such a fuss.