US expert sketches nightmare nuclear terrorist attack on major city

AFP ^ | Wed, Sep 22, 2004

[Area Freeper]

A trained nuclear engineer using material the size of an orange could build an atomic bomb to fit into a van, proliferation expert Laura Holgate said, sketching a nightmare scenario of a terrorist attack on a major city.

She recalled that terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 with a van loaded with conventional explosives.

Holgate told reporters at a meeting in Vienna of the UN nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was "not widely shared and understood" how risky the current situation is, especially since terrorists would not necessarily need top-level scientists to build a bomb.

The nuclear threat remains the big one, and all too real, said Holgate, a senior member of the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) think tank and a former US Department of Energy (news - web sites) official for disposal of plutonium.

She said the "raw material for nuclear terrorism is housed in hundreds of facilities in dozens of countries and inadequately secured."

"That's the central point of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative" which the United States and Russia have launched to repatriate highly enriched uranium (HEU) and to convert nuclear research reactors from HEU to low enriched uranium (LEU) use.

"We know nuclear theft is happening already," she said, saying that one institute in Russia has documented "23 attempts over eight years to steal nuclear bomb-making materials."

"We know these failed. We don't know how many succeeded and went undetected," Holgate said.

She also said she did not think terrorists had yet a nuclear weapon. "If terrorist organizations had been able to do this (obtain one), they would have used it by now," Holgate said.

The stakes are high.

"A nuclear device going off in any large city around the globe is going to kill millions of people," she said.

"The economic damage can be in the trillions (of dollars) and it can also be global," she said.

"This is in contrast to a dirty-bomb threat that tends to be hyped," she said about concern that terrorists could use conventional bombs with radioactive materials, contaminating areas with radiation rather than destroying them with the blast of an atomic bomb.

Holgate said a problem in making sure that nuclear materials are not lying where terrorists can get them is that there is "lack of acceptance" within the Russian government that "their material is not adequately secured and that there is a relationship between terrorism and these materials."

But she said the Russians seemed to be more aware of the threat since the Beslan school tragedy and a recognition of "weaknesses" in the Russian system, due to bribes and poor security.

The United States and Russia have produced most of the highly radioactive material now spread throughout the world.

Holgate said the United States and the then-Soviet Union gave out 20 tonnes of HEU in the 1950s and 1960s as part of the Atoms for Peace program for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

"Keeping track of where this HEU is now kilogram by kilogram is difficult." she said.

In addition, over 1,000 tonnes were created by the United States and the Soviet Union for their weapons programs, and there is no minute accounting for this.

William Potter, from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a California-based think tank, said that in addition the Soviet Union and now Russia have some seven icebreaker ships which use nuclear fuel enriched to about 60 percent, Potter said.

HEU is uranium enriched to over 20 percent, but weapons grade uranium starts at 80 percent enrichment for the U-235 isotope.

Holgate said terrorists could do without the sophistication needed for small bombs. "A truck size is probably a more relevant size," since such a bomb could be made with lower levels of HEU.

[Neocon Shavuz]

You are joking, right? The UN will cease to exist.

UN now is anti-American organization. Should US decide to leave UN, nobody would cry about it.

Israel will conquer the Mideast.


Israel had never wanted and never will conquer any country, although it has capabilities. Japan will become allied with South Korea and conquer the north. China will be defeated by Taiwan with US and Russian help.

Say what? Why?



I'll give you my scenario:
1.US in the economical crisis which is the deepest and most destructive in it's history.
2.World goes down together with US.
3.Islamic imperialists overthrow berely-holding ME governments in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan (!).
4.Iran engage in Iraq against US troops full-scale.
5.Pakistan attacks India with nuclear weapon. India responded.
6.Full scale oil blackmail of West on behalf of countries who's new governments support pan-Islamic war.
7.Democrats blame Bush for everything.
8.Homosexuals demand right to marry legally.

Enough?

[Doomonyou]

The UN will cease to exist.

Ground Zero?

[Doomonyou]

8.Homosexuals demand right to marry legally.

That's it, we're doomed.

[Bald Eagle777]

Check out this web site, these guys are fighting the good fight:

www.aclj.org

Soldiers

[Lazamataz]

She said the "raw material for nuclear terrorism is housed in hundreds of facilities in dozens of countries and inadequately secured."

Your statement (that you quoted) wasn't the only example of exaggeration. To make a bomb easily, you need enriched uranium, and that is not available all over the place. To make a plutonium bomb, you need a much more complicated device.

Maybe she's trying to sell a book.

[Centurion2000]

One could trigger a nuclear event just by pushing two sub critical masses together...then boom

Sorry, that's wrong. You'd get a criticality which would be like some C4 going off and a nice blue flash .... but not a BIG BOOM.

You need to explosively compress the mass into a supercriticality and feed it more neutrons.

[Centurion2000]

And dogs and cats living together ... MASS HYSTERIA

All right ENOUGH, I get the picture. What if you're wrong?

If I'm wrong, we go to jail, peacefully, quietly, we'll enjoy it. But if I'm right and we can stop this thing ? Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of REGISTERED VOTERS.

[Doomonyou]

Here's another one:

Mrs. Doomonyou and I are going to a fundraiser this weekend in Sacramento.

http://www.pacificjustice.org/index.cfm

[dennisw]

bttttt

[Bald Eagle777]

Good stuff, appreciated.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Shryke]

think Chernobyl, only 1000 times worse.

WHOA! I don't think that is true at ALL. Chernobyl was an exposed, huge nuclear core. No WAY would ground zero be "hotter" - it couldn't be. Most of the nuclear material would be blown away.

[RightWhale]

A trained nuclear engineer using material the size of an orange could build an atomic bomb to fit into a van, proliferation expert Laura Holgate said,

Oh? Proliferating something for sure.

[Doomonyou]

Most of the nuclear material would be blown away.

Where? I'm not sure which way the wind blows on the east coast, but anywhere but out to sea would afferct millions.

[PatrickHenry]

You gotta look at the bright side of things. The blast will likely go off in a blue state. Because of the catastrophic loss of life, they'll lose at least one House member after the following census. We'll solidify our control of Congress.

(Or maybe I've been freeping too long.}

[Shryke]

Not really. The blast itself not only turns a portion of the material into energy, but basically throws the rest of it all over the place, as particles. This would definitely have an effect on the biosphere, but remember that the core of a fission weapon is rather small. It's not that much hazardous material, spread out over thousands (maybe millions) of square miles. Higher cancer rates near ground zero, perhaps slight increases in outlying areas. We wouldn't have hordes of mutants, though. Chernobyl was entirely different. That sucker was irradiating steam and weather like crazy (IIRC).

[Shryke]

Hahahahaha! But wait! They'll blame GWB. Curses! Foiled again.

[cav68]

My view exactly, in my idea of a real attack this is what they would use as it can be delivered with a lot of noticeably instead of a loud noise and a quick reaction this can be dispersed by so many means which would go undetected until people began to fall over. More attention needs to be directed in this direction. Bump

[Area Freeper]

9. Liberals wonder "why do they hate us?"

[clamper1797]

Don't forget all the many who will die in the retaliation