- Sep 14, 2004
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-The Other Nuke Nightmare
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050214/wterror.html
Posted Sunday, February 6, 2005
Among U.S. counterterrorism officials, it is the ultimate nightmare scenario: al-Qaeda detonating a nuclear bomb in a U.S. city. Osama bin Laden says it is a religious duty to obtain a bomb, and most experts believe that if al-Qaeda were to succeed, the group wouldn't hesitate to use it. Though building even a crude nuclear weapon is time consuming, the wide availability of raw material and scientific expertise means that it is plausible for terrorists someday to get their hands on one. "The simplest nuclear bomb," says Ivan Oelrich, director of the security project at the Federation of American Scientists, "is very simple indeed."
The biggest hurdle is getting the material that causes the nuclear explosion. For a basic nuclear weapon, terrorists would need about 100 lbs. of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium (HEU).
Fortunately, manufacturing HEU is extremely difficult. Refining it requires vast industrial facilities, top-flight engineers and the kinds of resources available to a government but not to rogue terrorist groups. Unfortunately, many states have already done the hard work, creating 1,800 tons of HEU that is housed at research facilities, weapons depots and other storage sites in as many as 24 countries, according to William Potter, director of nonproliferation studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Of greatest concern is the more than 300 tons of HEU in the former Soviet Union. Some of the material may have already gone missing: since 1991, there have been seven attempted thefts reported of small amounts of bomb-grade material and more than 700 reported thefts of unrefined nuclear material. In Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 1998, Russian intelligence uncovered a plot by employees at a nuclear facility in the region to smuggle out 40 lbs. of HEU for sale on the black market. (The Russian cannot control their own nuke material, yet they are going to ship nuke fuel to Iran.)
With sufficient fissile material in hand, a trained engineer could build a crude device without too much difficulty. The most basic design is that of the Hiroshima bomb, which fired two pieces of HEU at each other from opposite ends of an artillery tube. The bomb could be assembled at a basic machine shop and would fit in the back of a truck. If smuggled into the U.S. and detonated in a major metropolitan area, such a weapon could kill hundreds of thousands.
Not everyone believes the danger is imminent. Last August, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov dismissed concerns about the security of Russian HEU as "just a myth." However big the threat, critics say President Bush has yet to tackle it head-on.
ON THE LOOSE: Sites like this nuclear-waste depository in Russia's Murmansk region remain vulnerable to theft.
"The Bush Administration has failed to declare war on nuclear terrorism," says nuclear expert Graham Allison, a former Clinton official. The Bush Administration is expected to earmark about $400 million this year for securing nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. Over the past two and a half years, international teams of nuclear experts have retrieved more than 230 lbs. of bomb-grade uranium from such countries as Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Romania, Libya and the Czech Republic. But at its current pace, Allison charges, the effort to secure all Russian nuclear weapons and fissile material will not be complete until 2020. Critics of the Administration say the U.S. should pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to get more aggressive about securing nuclear material in his country. "We're in a race between cooperation and catastrophe," says former Senator Sam Nunn, who helped create the 13-year-old U.S.-Russian program to destroy Russia's surplus HEU before it falls into the wrong hands.
The world may not have much time. In the months before Sept. 11, bin Laden and associates met in Afghanistan with a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud. At one meeting, according to an account made public by the White House, a bin Laden associate indicated he had nuclear material and wanted to know how to use it to make a weapon. Mahmoud provided information about nuclear-weapons programs, the White House said. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mahmoud's son said his father had rebuffed bin Laden. The bad news is that he is surely still trying.
