'Dirty' bomb could wipe out thousands
NIGEL HAWKES ON BIN LADEN'S SECRET WEAPON
NUCLEAR terrorism, the ultimate nightmare, could come in many forms, say experts who have studied the possibilities. The least likely of all is the explosion of a nuclear warhead, although there are thousands in the world. To achieve that, a terrorist group would either need to acquire a complete warhead from one of the current nuclear weapons powers, or the material and the know-how to make its own.
While neither is impossible, they do not make much sense from a terrorist’s point of view.
Much simpler, and equally terrifying, would be to create a dirty bomb from nuclear waste material and conventional explosives.
Setting it off in a city would spew lethal radioactivity over a considerable distance, causing many casualties and rendering whole neighbourhoods uninhabitable.
Bruce Blair, president of the Centre for Defence Information in Washington DC, estimated in a recent report that a dynamite-laden casket of spent fuel from a nuclear power station, detonated in Manhattan at noon, might kill 2,000 people and leave many thousands more with radiation poisoning.
It is quite possible that bin Laden’s terrorist organisation already possesses the material for this kind of “nuclear bomb”.
Earlier this year customs officers on the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan seized ten canisters of radioactive material bound allegedly for Quetta in Pakistan. Some have suggested that their true destination was bin Laden.
Real nuclear weapons are a very different proposition. There are several possible sources from which bin Laden might have acquired one: Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, or, just possibly, Iraq.
Pakistan has about three dozen nuclear weapons, all based on highly enriched uranium.
But experts such as George Perkovich of the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottsville, Virginia, believes that the fissile cores are kept apart from the warheads, which contain the electronics needed to detonate them.
Unless bin Laden had enormous help from supporters within the Pakistan nuclear organisations it would have been impossible to obtain both components and re-unite them. One without the other would not be much use.
All a nuclear weapon requires to detonate, technically, is a critical mass of either highly enriched uranium or plutonium and a source of neutrons to start the chain reaction. But in practice, engineering a successful nuclear weapon is a lot harder than this. Simply hurling two sub-critical masses of uranium together would be likely to produce more of a fizzle than a bang.
True, plenty of accounts of nuclear weapons that are publicly available provide more details of how to make them, but experts still believe that this is beyond the capabilities of bin Laden.
Such a primitive bomb would be too large for easy transport. It would be much better, from bin Laden’s point of view, to acquire a complete bomb, miniaturised to make it no larger than a small refrigerator.
The Soviet Union is said to have made several hundred such “suitcase” weapons, each capable of a one-kiloton explosion — though the Russians deny it.
Since the Soviet Union broke up there have been many reports of such weapons going missing. Russian General Aleksandr Lebed has testified to the United States Congress that 84 of the devices cannot be accounted for.
Mr Blair says the consensus among Western experts is that, while Russia may be unable to account for them all, the chances are that they have been dismantled and are in storage somewhere, and it is the paperwork needed to trace them that has gone missing.
A suitcase bomb, should bin Laden’s group be able to transport and detonate it, would cause thousands of casualties.
But the most plausible hypothesis is that bin Laden’s bomb, if it exists, consists of nuclear waste wrapped around plastic explosive. That is quite frightening enough.
Suppose, if you will, that OBL had planned in advance that our reaction would be to storm the country
with a large contingent of soldiers and try to assault his compunds from the ground.
What better way to be a hero of the masses than to obliterate an entire army and yourself with a nuclear weapon.
He would go down in emphamy as the hero of the ages.
Whoops! There it is!
The serrious expositors on Islamist terrs all report that 'relief work' groups run by muslims are nearly always just terr covers. And this one is headed by a nuclear terrorist.