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. "

Comments

Do they need to?

[vonoech]

If a terrorist group is able to build a dirty bomb that causes mass casualties why would they want a nuke?

Re:Good Question...

[hey!]

In a way, this situation reminds me of the attitude towards tsunamis in the Indian ocean.

Anybody who thought about it at all realized that it was inevitable that a tsunami of this scale would hit sooner or later. It is an event that is, as mathemeticians say, "Poisson distributed", that is to say that it is like the decay of a radioisotope and the resultant emission of a particle. It can happen at any time, but it can be characterized by a rate, which is a probability that it will happen in some specific period of time. The rate for massive tsunamis in the Indian ocean, as it happened, was very low, so nobody was concerned it would occur this year, and or even in our lifetimes. So few people other than professional tsunami watchers probably thought the expense of building a warning network was warrented. And who knows? There may have been other investments that would have, based on mathetmatical expected return, saved more lives.

But now that it has happened, of course everyone wishes we'd spent the money to put a warning system in place. And, in fact, we almost certainly will. It's hard to say whether this is the best investment, but there are other reasons to do so I guess.

The case of nuclear terrorism has both similarities and differences. It is different, in that there is a human agency involved that would do this sometime in the next several years if it could. But they are somewhat unlikely to be able to do this, due to steps we have taken to prevent that. If we take further steps, it becomes extremely unlikely. But it never quite becomes impossible. At some point, we may be able to drive the threat of nuclear terror down to the point where it is a lot like the pre-tsunami situation. People not professionally involved will question the value of the next marginal investment in prevention. And they will, arguably, have a point. But when the disaster actually happens, hopefully some generations hence, people will have wished to have done more.

At the same time, there are other possibilities, like the killer asteroid scenario, that could use some attention. The problem is you just don't know in advance which disaster will happen to you. Choosing what to do is not simple. Suppose you are examining the possibilty that an asteroid capable of spreading the destruction of a small nuclear bomb is going to hit a population center. Suppose (hypothetically, of course) it turns out to be 10x more likely than a terrorist attack of the same magnitude. We should spend our money on asteroid defense, right? Well, what if it costs 100x as much to do something about it?

In short, you have to know the marginal value of a dollar invested in terms of incresed security.