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Dirty Bomb Attack More Likely to Occur Than Nuclear Terrorism Incident, Experts Say
Terrorists would find it difficult to acquire a nuclear weapon or the materials to build such a device, and the White House believes that other weapons of mass destruction pose a greater threat, the Washington Post reported last week (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2004). “I would say that from the perspective of terrorism, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence we have is that their efforts are focused on biological and chemical” weapons, said U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and Disarmament John Bolton. “Not to say there aren’t any dealings with radiological materials, but the technology for bio and chem is comparatively so much easier that that’s where their efforts are concentrating.” Other experts warned, however, that some groups remain committed to acquiring a nuclear weapon. “The thing to keep in mind is that while it is extremely difficult, we have highly motivated and intelligent people who would like to do it,” said Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Groups such as al-Qaeda — possessing minimal nuclear know-how and equipment — have two main avenues for acquiring an atomic bomb, experts said. The group could steal either an existing weapon or one of its essential components — plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Stealing uranium from the former Soviet Union would be the most likely way for terrorists to acquire a nuclear capability, according to nuclear scientists, while counterterrorism officials think al-Qaeda would prefer to buy a stolen Russian or Pakistani weapon, according to the Post. Experts added, however, that it would be very difficult for terrorists to figure out how to detonate such a weapon without expert assistance. Newer Russian weapons, for example, are equipped with sophisticated locking devices, the Post reported. “You’d have to run it through a specific sequence of events, including changes in temperature, pressure and environmental conditions before the weapon would allow itself to be armed, for the fuses to fall into place and then for it to allow itself to be fired,” said Charles Ferguson, a science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You don’t get it off the shelf, enter a code and have it go off.” Older Russian atomic bombs, however, have simpler protection mechanisms, experts acknowledged, but even those devices have security features that would be difficult for an untrained individual to overcome, according to the Post. “There is a whole generation of weapons designed for artillery shells, manufactured in the 1950s, that aren’t going to have sophisticated locking devices,” said Laura Holgate, who ran nonproliferation programs at the Defense and Energy departments from 1995 to 2001. “But it is a tougher task to take a weapon created by a country, even the 1950s version, a tougher job for a group of even highly qualified Chechen terrorists to make it go boom.” Transporting such a device out of Russia would also be difficult, according to the Post. Most bombs that could be stolen would contain plutonium, which would be more easily detected by sensors due to the higher radiation levels it emits. “I wouldn’t rule out plutonium altogether, but if one were a terrorist bent upon demonstrating a nuclear explosion, the HEU route is technically much easier,” said William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. Some nuclear experts believe that al-Qaeda would be more likely to build a “gun-type” device combining uranium and conventional explosives, like the one used in the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. There have been 10 reported incidents of highly enriched uranium theft in the past 10 years, totaling less than 8 kilograms of material, according to a database maintained by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, the various quantities could not be easily combined because of varying levels of enrichment, while the thieves — none of whom was connected to al-Qaeda — had no buyers lined up. Nearly all were caught while trying to find one, the Post reported. “Making the connection between buyer and seller has proved to be one of the most substantial hurdles for terrorists,” said Matthew Bunn of Harvard University’s Project on Managing the Atom. Each of the few known attempts by al-Qaeda to obtain highly enriched uranium was foiled because there was either no seller or the material was fake. “Each time they tried, they got scammed,” said counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of the RAND Corp. (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, Dec. 29, 2004). A radiological weapon would be far easier to procure and to detonate, experts said. “You would need a stick of dynamite and the kind of radioactive source you find in a common smoke detector,” said Charles Ferguson, co-author of The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism. “Any person who could build a car bomb or suicide bomb, like the ones we’ve seen in Iraq or other places, could couple that to radioactive materials and that is it,” he added. Undersecretary of State Bolton said there is a risk from the availability of radiological materials, and that the United States and other countries “have not paid enough attention to this question. Everybody needs to do more work on that.” Damage from a “dirty bomb” attack would be mostly psychological, expert said. “The real effects would be economic shutdown due to contamination, as well as the social and psychological fear created,” Ferguson said (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post II, December 29, 2004).
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