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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. "
... would think that the possibility of a terrorist WMD is far-fetched.
Lose sleep? No. Sleep with one eye open? Damn right.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
I think people are far more worried about the radiological and economic effects of a dirty bomb than a mushroom cloud vaporizing New York or San Francisco. The article should have discussed how easy it is to build a dirty bomb and the effects it will have on the area it's detonated in.
The real question isn't whether terrorists could build a nuclear bomb, but whether they would want to. As long as the US can threaten smaller countries with the "invade first and ask questions later" approach to foreign policy, the fear will breed opponents to the US. The stronger the fear is, the likelier it is to fool individuals into thinking they can solve things by killing US citizens. The most effective way to combat terrorism is to stop people from being afraid, not by rounding up terrorists that are already known. America is channeling all its energy into short-term solutions and forgetting the long-term ones.
One good turn - gets all the covers.
If a terrorist group is able to build a dirty bomb that causes mass casualties why would they want a nuke?
Because dirty bombs aren't designed to cause mass casualties. Their main effect is fear; with the popular in terror of anything 'nuclear', they are ideal for cowing a whole population. Hell, you don't even need to detonate one; just the thought of a dirty bomb is good enough to terrorize people. The current mindset in the USA is ample evidence of this.
They can also render an (albeit-small) area of real estate uninhabitable for a lengthy period of time. This of course can lead to a significant amount of economic fallout.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
There's a lot of things we know terrorists can do - blowing up trains, flying planes into buildings, releasing nerve gas on the underground - because they've already done it. And look how often that happens. The chances of dying in a terrorist attack are about 10,000 times smaller than dying in a car accident.
The only two times a nuclear bomb was used in anger, they were both used to prepare the way for the surrender and occupation of the target. Until and unless some evidence presents itself to the contrary, I will have to say that you are wrong.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
when I realized that living and working close to a large, urban area was no longer enjoyable and even dangerous. We moved to an agricultural area that is less risky from a terrorist standpoint just because of the paucity of victims and lack of headline material ("suicide bomber kills 3 pheasants, a rabbit, and 14 beetles"). It takes a bit more energy to make a living in rural America (or rural anywhere I expect) but the rewards are great even disregarding the enhanced safety. No crowded freeways, a lower noise threshold and abundant recreation (fishing, boating, hunting, bird watching, etc.). Plus, the advent of the Internet and high bandwidth has made moving to the country easier than ever. Overhead is less expensive too; I pay $350 a month for about 600 sq feet of office space in downtown and a 3-br/2bath house in a nice area is less than $100k!
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I'm a physicist. I know how hard it would be for an unskilled, untrained bunch of terrorists to build a bomb from scratch. I don't lose sleep over this.
However, why would terrorists want to even try this? Assuming they wanted a real nuclear detonation rather than a dirty bomb, isn't the possibility of purchasing or stealing an intact, complete weapon of more concern? Reading this doesn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies about the former Soviet Union. And remember, the Pakistanis and North Koreans have the expertise, know-how, materials, and a desperate need for hard currency.
It's worth noting that the size (i.e. yield) of a nuclear weapon terrorists would be likely to acquire/build would be very low (maybe a few kilotons). And while the destruction sowed by such a device would be larger than that of a plane or truck bomb, it would not destroy a city.
First the bomb is likely to be detonated at ground level, or a few stories up in a garage. This limits the blast damage significantly. Assuming an urban environment, tall buildings would also limit the devices blast effectiveness. US and Soviet bombs of the Cold War were several *mega*tons, and were detonated several thousand feet in the air. With a terrorist's bomb you will not see the massive air burst followed by a blast wave that topples buildings and vaporizes people for miles.
The most dangerous effect from small bombs detonated at ground level is fallout. This would likely be enhanced by the very structures that limited the blast radius. Surrounding buildings would force radioactive dust and debris up, making the likelihood of winds blowing the fallout over a larger area higher.
Indeed, a nuclear detonation in Manhattan would destroy several blocks and kills tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. Such an event would be devastating to our economy and to the lives of millions. IMHO this is something completely different from Cold War style nuclear scares. A nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union would have killed hundreds of millions of people, billions in the after effects. Here, the likelihood of you being personally and directly harmed by a terrorist nuclear weapon is relatively low when compared to the effects to the economy on a national (and global) scale.
sig
Noooo, he wanted change now, so we decided to go piss everybody off, kill several tens of thousands (regrettable, oh so regrettable, but hey, that's war, kids!), tie up our military in a grand neoconservative experiment, and piss away every last ounce of goodwill and "I wanna be like you guys" we'd spent several decades building.
We were so well on the way to westernizing the world. Now, we've turned ourselves into the very kind of monster we're trying to defeat. We've gone from being the world's beacon of freedom, democracy and civil rights to "oh, shut up--at least we're better than Saddam was!"
Just wait. It has yet to get really bad.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
US Media to citizens:
"We in the US media wish to shield you from this world. We bring you only news stories from your own country,
The top two stories on CNN. The headline and the one on the top right.
1. Blasts rock Baghdad, kill 20
2. Putin: Iran not developing nukes
Top stories on Fox news:
1. Attacks Target Shiites in Baghdad
2. Putin: Iran Has No Nuke Plans
The US reports plenty of world news. I know while any post that says (something in the US = bad) is modded up here, this is just silly. When the Tsunami happened, it was 24/7 Tsunami coverage here. When the Russian Schoolchildren were held by terrorists it was basically 24 hour coverage. Sorry if CNN doesn't report soccer scores from around the world, but America doesn't care about trival stuff from around the world.
unless the story furthers the goal of making you even more freightened. Besides, who wants any real news about other countries?
The BBC is available in America, the fact is people are more interested in their local news than world news. Sorry if this bothers you. It isnt' a media consperacy though, it's just a free market economy reacting to what people want.
They don't even have NASCAR in those strange lands!
I guess you are trying to generalize about southerns now, since NASCAR's following is mostly in the more rural section of the country.
Do you really care about what happens in a place without NASCAR, unless they are IMMINENTLY ready to attack! Like SHARKS, and ASBESTOS, and POWER LINES!!! News at 11!!!!!!"
Please. Yes, people care more about trivial events in their own country than trivial events around the world. When something big happens, it is covered ad nausem.
Grandparent: unless the story furthers the goal of making you even more freightened.
You: The top two stories on CNN. The headline and the one on the top right. 1. Blasts rock Baghdad, kill 20 2. Putin: Iran not developing nukes
I don't see how stories about insurgents in Iraq (essentially equivalent to terrorists, and spun as a threat to the US) and nukes in Iran disprove the original point.
As to people being naturally more interested in their local news, well, sure. But the tendancy is far more pronounced in the USA. There may be any number of reasons for it, but it's certainly the case. Let's compare the top stories on news.bbc.co.uk, for example: Aside from the Baghdad explosion, the top two stories are about Nepal and the Congo.
Care to rebut?
I don't thing it's about having your cake and eating it too. Haven't you ever done something, or thought something, and then later realized that you were mistaken? There is nothing wrong with changing your mind over an issue when you are presented with new information. Of course not everyone is quite that sincere, but I think it's okay to give people the benefit of the doubt.
He said no conventional design has ever failed. Browsing the test tables a bit showed that we had 17 successful attempts before our failed attempt. This was an early attempt at creating a very low yield weapon. It's expected yield was only 200 tons, and they used 5 tons of HE in order to attempt to start it. It was definitely not a conventional design.
Even building a HEU bomb isn't really that simple. High energy collisions can produce unexpected effects, and you may well get a very disappointing yield, if anything. And, if you have plutonium, you have no choice but to do an implosion-style device, which means manufacturing/acquiring krytrons, high performance capacitors, etc, and a lot more rigorous testing.
In a real nuclear bomb development program, you don't want to waste your hard-to-get HEU/plutonium on a fizzle. So, what is generally done is you take a material with similar properties to your nuclear fuel build test bombs with it (in the case of uranium, you'd use DU). Then, during the collision, you analyze the impact (for example, with high-speed X-ray analysis). This in itself requires a good amount of equipment. Even with all of the "parts" on hand, a proper atomic bomb development program will still take at least half a year and a lot of resources.
Hijacking fuel rods? That'd work for most US nuclear submarine fuel rods (which are highly enriched), but not conventional power plant fuel rods. You'll only have a few % of U235 - you might as well just refine from scratch. If you're talking about spent fuel rods, you can get plutonium out of them, but you have to worry about the differences between Pu239 and Pu240; you don't want to have to separate them, or again, you might as well just start from scratch. Plus, you have to deal with all of the other dangerous radioactive "junk" that builds up in spent rods.
A truck full of spent fuel rods would, however, make for a nice way to irradiate a large area. Put them in a big vat and set two timers: One to dump as much nitric and hydrofluoric acid as you can get your hands on into the mix to dissolve the cladding and possbly some of the fuel, and the second to dump a large tank of gasoline in a couple hours later and ignite it to help burn the radioactive compounds into the air. You should be able to cause a US-based chernobyl that way. Cleanup would be catastrophically expensive, as it was for Chernobyl; and while mass irradiation events aren't frequently filled with mass casualties, the area that they contaminate is rendered uninhabitable for several hundred years (not 10s of thousands or millions like anti-nuclear nuts pretend, mind you, but still a long time).
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)