[wastedyears]

Thermite is pretty good at destroying engine blocks. I’d hate to see what it would do to a human. But for amplifying or sensitizing the effects of explosives? I don’t see how that could be possible considering what thermite does.

[Steve Van Doorn]

Actually some of the strongest HE weapons made is a fuel air bomb made with Thermite (at least they tested them a long time ago I am not sure how far they got with it.)

[Kozak]

Thermite would do a great job of vaporizing that Uranium and Thorium, making for maximal dispersal of radioactive contamination....

[SBD1]

When you are making a Dirty Bomb, it would definitely would be a massive heat source to disperse the radioactive material I would think, especially if it was used like this.<.a>

[The Great RJ]

While the materials found could have been used to build bombs of a sort they do not represent a true terrorist dirty bomb. The uranium and thorium while radioactive are not as dangerous as gamma sources like Cobalt-60 that could be lethal in small doses especially if widely spread by an explosive device.

A BBC produced TV movie The Dirty War gives a more realistic picture of a dirty bomb attack set in central London. The terrorists used highly radioactive isotopes in powder form and dispersed them with suicide truck bombs.

[Redbob]

The beryllium listed there is a pretty poisonous substance in even trace amounts: at the Y-12 plant in Tennessee, it’s machined using the same isolation and decontamination procedures used for uranium.

[Abathar]

Some of the biggest bangs you can make is aluminum dust powdered in an FAE.

Army was playing around with that stuff years ago.