Nuclear Terrorism

1. How readily do you feel terrorist can acquire nuclear weapons?

Ferguson writes in his book, “The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism”, maintains “that there is a greater likelihood today than at any time in the past three decades that nuclear weapons will actually be used”. Acquiring high risk radioactive material is a certainty, therefore a radiological attack appears to be all but certain within the coming years.

The acquisition and use of a nuclear weapon depends on the type and the chances of a nuclear even occurring are from highly possible with minimum effect to highly improbable with devastating effect.

My personal feeling is that the USA will be hit by a nuclear device in the form of a “dirty bomb”, delivered with a conventional explosive within two years or less.

There are four possibilities:

· Nuclear device with plutonium and/or uranium (nuclear bomb).

There are two types: 1. Simple “gun type” as used in Hiroshima, killing over 100,000 people. This device is simple and reliable and easy to make, but requires approximately 100 pounds of HEU, which is very abundant on the world market. There is an unknown amount in Russia, mostly unsecured.

During the Manhattan Project the scientist were so confident that the bomb would work that it was not pretested prior to dropping over Hiroshima. A knowledgeable terrorist could build this type and “drop it” without pretesting.

The device is a 76. 2 MM anti-craft barrel, 6.6” wide, 6 feet long, weighting about 1000#. Cordless power can be used to propel a 56 # HEU bullet into a 85# HEU target. The down side is that, with all the regulations and detective devices in place, HEU is hard to obtain in the required purity to make a bomb. One needs 95% pure HEU for the bomb to work. The probability of making this device is low but the results would be devastating.

The second type is the implosion type nuclear device. This type of device uses weapon grade plutonium, composed of isotope 239, was dropped on Nagasaki. A shell of WGPU is surrounded with chemical explosives arrayed to produce a symmetrical inward moving (implosion) shock wave that compresses the plutonium enough to be supercritical. This device is very difficult to make and requires experts and many days, plus it has to be tested; making it highly unlikely that a terrorist organization, without the backing of a country could build this type weapon. Also the plutonium required would be extremely difficult to obtain, although it is thought that plutonium is available in Russia, N. Korea, and Pakistan. Plutonium is much easier to detect with radiation sensing instruments since it has “Identity” as opposed to HEU, which gives off very little“identity”.

· Improvised nuclear device (IND). This device would use HEU or Plutonium but not used in the type of mechanism described above. This would be a crude nuclear weapon with less explosive power, but still dispense radiation.

· “Dirty bomb”. Conventional explosives with radioactive material attached. This type devise is the most likely weapon to be used by the terrorist simply because the conventional explosives are readily available and the radiation material is also available all over the world in the medical and commercial sector. The isotope material that is most desired in a “dirty bomb”, due to its radioactivity, half life, and availability is: Cobalt 60- ½ life 5.3 years; Cesium -137 ½ life 30 years; Indium -192 ½ life 74 days; Strontium 90 -½ life 29 years; Americium ½ life -433 years; Plutonium ½ life -88 years; Radium -½ life 1600 years. The most probable one that will be used is cesium chloride (power form) which is very plentiful.

Depending on the area where the devise is used and the element used, an event causing very few deaths could make the area uninhabitable for 5-1600 years. The psychological effect on the population would be devastating.

· Attack or takeover of a nuclear power plant. A nuclear power plant uses less pure HEU for the reactors and with the safeguards build into the operation, even if there was a malfunction it is impossible for the core to reach a supercritical mass which is needed for (fission) a nuclear blast. True, as in Chernobyl, there could be a melt- down in the core and radiation released.

The destruction of a nuclear power plant would cause considerable damage. The loss of the plant itself and permanent or temporary loss of use of any co-located nuclear power reactors would cost billions of dollars. Wide spread radioactive contamination could lead to tens of billions of dollars loss to the economic sector, extensive property damage, and long term physical and psychological health effects.

A report of June 2004 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States found that even though an attempt by al Qaeda in 1994 to purchase uranium failed, “al Qaeda continues to pursue its strategic objective of obtaining a nuclear weapon”.

Presently there are numerous sources where nuclear material suitable for a nuclear device can be obtained. The resource of greatest concern is Russia. Russia has tons of HEU and weapon grade plutonium, mostly under very thin security.

The Nunn-Luger bill addresses the problem by appropriating monies to help Russia secure and store nuclear material. The US is also hiring or placing, the critical scientist in the program in scientific or commercial establishments to prevent them from selling their knowledge to other rogue countries.

Another concern is Pakistan, which has nuclear capability.If one does a risk analysis; probability of an event multiplied by its consequence. The greater the probability or the greater the consequence, the higher the overall risk.

Nuclear terrorism experts generally agree that the nuclear terror acts with the highest consequence are the least likely to occur because they are the most difficult to accomplish. Conversely, those acts with the least damaging consequence are the most likely to take place because they are the easiest to carry out. Therefore using this analogy and with the information presented, I would say that the risk of a RDD (“dirty bomb”) happening in the USA within the next two years is high.

References:

1. Ferguson, Charles D., Potter, William C. The Face of Nuclear Terrorism Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group 2005.

2. Allison, Graham Nuclear Terrorism Times Books 2004

2. In the eyes of the adversary, assess an operation of such on the homeland. Include tactic, target, damage assessment and casualties, and response expectations by emergency services.

The players: al Qaeda agent (politico-religious); plot over a year time frame; material from Russia; HEU isotope 235 and cesium chloride 137 as secondary REW; HEU 235 very difficult to detect with present sensors if properly shielded; maximum 100#; “gun assembly” weapon, 6 inches in diameter by 6 feet long; placed in ship in Hong Kong with load of toys to US west coast—Los Angeles--; device on manual detonator via remote control from a member of the ship crew (imbedded suicide bomber). The purpose is economic, psychological, and symbolic destruction of an important seaport, along with a large number of deaths, making the area unusable for decades.

The black market in nuclear material is a known and proven fact since Russia split in the early 1990s and with unsecured nuclear weapons and unemployed scientists would help or sell their services to the highest bidder. An al Qaeda working in Russia, via the black market, obtained small amounts of HEU (isotope 235 and cesium chloride 137) from numerous dealers for large sums of money. He was buying in small amounts from many different sellers so he would not attract attention. The HEU was packaged and smuggled out of the country and eventually ended in a warehouse in the New Territory in Hong Kong. Here, technicians with nuclear experience, assembled a “gun assembly type” device, measuring 6’’ in diameter, and 6 feet long with conventional explosives at the end to propel a HEU 235 bullet into another HEU 235 mass at the other end of the tube. Also for backup a cesium chloride 137 REW that will detonate from the initial blast and increase the radiation level in the area. The detonator used was on a specific frequency that could be activated via an external source controlled by another operative (s) that would be an employee of the ship transporting containers of toys, destined for the port of Los Angeles, Ca. The device was placed in a lead box and also filled with toys to cover the device and stored in one of the 300 containers on the container ship. Since only about 2% of containers are checked prior to loading in Hong Kong, the chance of detection is almost impossible. The exact location of the device was unknown to the operatives carrying the detonation controls. In fact the operatives were told that the controls they were carrying were to make contact with other al Qaeda operatives in LA for another operation and the device was used to locate the unknown operatives on arrival in LA Harbor. The control was not to be activated until the ship was secured in the harbor.

If Hong Kong had the new X- Ray or gamma ray devices and scanned the containers, with the protection around the device they most probably would not be detected since only a small per cent of containers are scanned.

The ship sails for LA and on arrival would not be checked until in the harbor and then only when containers are off loaded.

On docking, the operatives would activate the radio device causing the “gun assembly” to detonate, thus atomizing the ship and destroying all within, at least, a one mile radius and killing probably 10,000 to 30,000 people. The cesium chloride 137 REW would be detonated via the initial explosion contaminating the area with cesium 137 (half life 30 years).

The EMT system would be over whelmed immediately and on approaching the site the radiation meters would go off the scale, making the approach, within 1 ½ miles of the scene impossible except for properly attired rescuers and then they would have to work in shifts to reduce the amount of radiation exposure received by each. The entire system would be totally overwhelmed for days.

The psychological effect would be unpredictable and the exit of people from the LA area would clog all the freeways and traffic would come to a standstill.

The economic damage would extend, not only to the US but to all other countries shipping goods into any harbor in the US, since the government would prohibit all container ships from entering any US port for a long time.

The economic effect would spread like falling dominos. Stores like Wal Mart, Target, etc that depend on shipments (China) from the Far East for their merchandise would be cut off, so with no stock, the employees would be furloughed and the economic fall-out on families and businesses would probably cause a recession if not a depression.

Within the last year there was a longshoremen’s strike in the LA shipping areas that almost put stories all over the US in depression stage since a large per cent of their merchandise comes from Asia. Just think what a nuclear event would do to the economy.

After the immediate effect had been controlled it would be very difficult, without foreign intelligence, to point to a specific perpetrator of the event although al Qaeda would probably be high on the list.

References:

1. Ferguson, Charles D., Potter, William C. The Face of Nuclear Terrorism Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group 2005.

2. Medalia, Jonathan Terrorist Nuclear Attack on Seaports: Threat and Response CRS Report For Congress #RS21293 Jan. 24, 2005

3. Stern, Jessica The Ultimate Terrorists Harvard University Press 1999