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Can Terrorists Build a Nuclear Bomb?
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. "
I highly recommend this book by John McPhee from 30 years ago. He even discusses the destruction of the world trade center.
I get the magazine and did read TFA, and it had a sidebar section about dirty bombs. If you click on the link in the post, scroll down and take a look at the "Dirty Destruction" link.
Well, there you go. Here's the article for the rest of us to read:
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.
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.
Do we even know what happens when a dirty bomb goes off? Yes, I know it's a normal explosive device laced with nuclear material, but what does that mean in terms of harmfulness?
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
BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2037769.stm
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 could make a nuclear reactor in his backyard what makes you think terrorists can't make a nuclear weapon?
IIRC the US had a project in the late 60's which tried to determine how hard it would be to build a nuclear bomb. They employed some freshly graduated physic students which had no prior knowledge about bomb designs but were allowed to use any material being in public domain. After about 3 man years they presented a working design. Taking into account that nowadays there is much more information available to the public it is likely that it would take even less time.
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).
I don't read replies by ACs.
"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.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
It's also very hard to make a nuclear weapon without poisoning yourself both chemically and radiologically.
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).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is one of the reasons I was furius when incurious, lying through his teeth George made his assertion that Iraq could make a "nucular" bomb in 6 months if they were able to obtain fissionable material. No shit? Any modern country could. Hell, I could. The hard part is refininng the fissionable material, not making the bomb.
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.
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.
our so called liberal media legitimized it by not pointing out such fallacies.
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.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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Radioactive cobalt dumped in vacant lot in Bangkok. 3 dead, 12 injured.
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Radioactive cobalt shows up in scrapyard in Turkey. Two injured cutting up the scrap.
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Radioactive cobalt shows up in scrapyard in Brazil. Four dead, 300 exposed.
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Radioactive cobalt shows up in Mexico. 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.