Brussels Bombers Filmed Nuclear Researchers, Hoped To Build A "Dirty Bomb," Expert Says (nbcnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The brothers behind this week's Brussels bombings also spied on a top nuclear researcher and hoped to build a so-called "dirty bomb," an expert involved in a probe into ISIS threats told NBC News on Thursday. Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui were responsible for planting a hidden camera outside the Belgian researcher's house, according to Claude Moniquet, a French former intelligence official who was hired to investigate potential plots targeting Europe's nuclear sector. This camera produced more than 10 hours of film showing the comings and goings of senior researcher at a Belgian nuclear center and his family. "The terrorist cell ... naively believed they could use him to penetrate a lab to obtain nuclear material to make a dirty bomb," Moniquet, CEO of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center privacy consultancy said. The researcher worked at a center which stored a "significant portion of the world's supply of radioisotopes," according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. These isotopes are used in hospitals and factories around the world but can also be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb" -- a device that could spread radioactive material across a wide area.

Comments

Re:It's not forever a pipe dream

[khasim]

That troubling part is that as incompetent as they may be, they're still quite highly effective.

But they aren't. In the USofA, you are more likely to be killed while moving furniture than by a terrorist.

If someone kills you tomorrow, it will probably be someone you know (friend or family) or a traffic accident.

I used to work for an insurance company. You could get a "terrorism" rider on your policy at additional cost. That cost? $1. And it was pure profit for the company.

The problem is that our news agencies and politicians are SELLING the idea of a terrorism threat for their own benefit.

Re:Doesn't add up....

[smooth wombat]

And yet extraordinarily they were left free to carry out bombings and kill innocent civilians.

Several of the 9/11 hijackers, including the two lead planners, were on watch lists yet not only entered the U.S. under their own names, moved about the country at will. They were never stopped, including after their visas had expired and, as we know, flew on multiple flights out of Boston to test and gauge security and to plan their attack.

Sounds like Belgium and Turkey were following the lead of George Bush and ignoring the problem.

Re: What are you trying to say?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually a grammatical error. Typically, when referring to a group of people you should only capitalize the first letter if the group identifier is itself a proper noun, like France, Japan, Asia, etc. For example, the people who live in France are collectively 'the French' and the people in Japan are collectively 'the Japanese', but unless you're describing people with the same last name, you shouldn't refer to them as 'the Blacks'.

Not So Fast...

[IBitOBear]

Nuclear Material in/near Reactors Secure's Itself.

Dry fuel pellets are harmless.

Fuel rods are made by welding dry pellets into steel I-Beams or similar big, heavy, structures.

Used (wet) fuel pellets are _fantastically_ _dangerous_ to handle, so much so that they have to kept wet at all times to keep them from roasting everything while they cool.

Back in the seventies my father (nuclear engineer) said he'd love to stage, and televise, a "raid" on a nuclear power facility... The _months_ necessary to get the stuff off the premises (let alone ground up into nuclear dust) would have probably lost its audience. But the "Fast As Possible" "Smallest Crew" version of the raid that the anti-nuke people were putting in movies and scare politics would be thoroughly disproved.

Even if I installed a pebble-bed reactor in your garage (and one _would_ fit), any attempt to turn it into a "dirty bomb" would fatal to the person attempting it. Someone could blow up the pebble-bed itself, but that would move a few of the "pebbles", if any, a short distance. Someone with a radiation counter and a radiation suit could then just go pick them up with tongs.

So the terrorists "want{ed} to build a dirty bomb" is about as likely to lead to that end as my personal desire to own all of Google _and_ Tesla Motors outright as a pure proprietorship.