Risk of radioactive "dirty bomb" growing

[2RHPZ]

Risk of radioactive "dirty bomb" growing

19:00*02*June*04
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Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

The risk of somebody somewhere triggering a radioactive "dirty bomb" is growing, evidence gathered by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency suggests.
The IAEA's records, which it has released to New Scientist, show a dramatic rise in the level of smuggling of radiological materials, defined as radioactive sources that could be used in dirty bombs but not nuclear bombs.
In 1996 there were just eight of these incidents but last year there were 51. Most cases are believed to have occurred in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. Smugglers target the radioactive materials used in factories, hospitals and research laboratories, which are not guarded as securely as those used by the nuclear industry.
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Radioactive smuggling

Since 1993, there have been 300 confirmed cases of illicit trafficking in radiological materials, 215 of them in the past five years. And the IAEA warns that the real level of smuggling may well be significantly larger, citing reports of a further 344 instances over the past 11 years which have not been confirmed by any of the 75 states that monitor illicit trafficking.
A dirty bomb is designed to spread radioactive material over a large area by combining radioactive material with a conventional explosive. It does not involve a nuclear explosion and would be unlikely to result in many immediate deaths, but it could provoke widespread panic and render buildings in the affected area unusable.
A terrorist attack using a dirty bomb is "a nightmare waiting to happen", says Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who used to work at the UK's atomic weapons plant in Aldermaston in Berkshire. "I'm amazed that it hasn't happened already."
Sterilisers and irradiators

Preventing nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands is a huge problem. Over the past 50 years, millions of radiation sources have been used around the world for industrial, medical and research purposes. Most of them are only weakly radioactive.
But according to the IAEA there are more than 10,000 sources designed for radiotherapy, each containing 1000 pellets of cobalt-60. Each pellet emits 100 gigabecquerels of radioactivity, enough to put somebody over their annual safety limit in two minutes.
There are also tens of thousands of large radiation sources used by industry as gauges, sterilisers and metal irradiators. The IAEA has expressed particular concern about the security of hundreds of thermo-generators made in Russia and the US, in which the heat produced by radioactive decay drives a generator to provide power in remote areas. Just one of them can contain as much strontium-90 as was released by the notorious Chernobyl accident in 1986.
The IAEA's smuggling figures do not include radiation sources that have simply gone missing. An average of one a day is reported to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as lost, stolen or abandoned.
The IAEA says there are still 1000 radioactive sources unaccounted for in Iraq. And of 25 sources stolen from the Krakatau steel company in Indonesia in October 2000, only three have been recovered.
In Tbilisi, Georgia, a taxi driver, Tedo Makeria, stopped by police in May 2003 was found to be carrying lead-lined boxes containing strontium-90 and caesium-137. And in Belarus customs officials have seized 26 radioactive cargoes between 1996 and 2003, six of them from Russia.

Radioactive mine

The only two known incidents that could be classed as radiological terrorism have occurred in Russia. In 1995 Chechen rebels buried a caesium-137 source in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow, and in 1998 a container of radioactive materials attached to a mine was found by a railway line near Argun in Chechnya.
One brighter spot is that there has been a fall in smuggling incidents involving plutonium and uranium, which could be used to make nuclear bombs. In 1992, 44 such incidents were recorded. By last year the figure had fallen to three, possibly because the nuclear industry has become more vigilant.
The increase in the number of confirmed incidents of theft and smuggling of radioactive material might be due, at least in part, to better monitoring. Nevertheless, powerful voices continue to warn of the threat of a dirty bomb attack.
In 2003, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the UK's counter-intelligence agency MI5, said a crude attack against a major western city was "only a matter of time".
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Rob Edwards

[2RHPZ]

Experts fear terrorists are seeking fuel-air bombs
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09:45*21*March*04
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New Scientist Print Edition
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Some experts fear that terrorists are trying to develop thermobaric and fuel-air bombs which can be even more devastating than conventional devices.
The Canadian defence research and development agency DRDC is taking the threat so seriously that it is testing thermobaric devices itself in an attempt to develop defences against them. And the US Marine Corps is using computerised war games to devise tactics that could help minimise casualties if insurgents in countries such as Iraq use thermobaric weapons in attacks.
The devices use a small charge to generate a cloud of explosive mixed with air. The main explosion is then detonated by a second charge (a fuel-air explosion), or by the explosive reacting spontaneously with air (a thermobaric explosion). The resulting shock wave is not as strong as a conventional blast, but it can do more damage as it is more sustained and, crucially, diminishes far more gradually with distance.
The main explosion is followed by a partial vacuum, creating a suction effect that compounds the damage and can add to the injuries - hence the term vacuum bomb. In enclosed spaces, the devices also use up oxygen and produce choking fumes, suffocating any survivors of the initial blast.
Numerous industrial accidents attest to the power of thermobaric explosions - a massive blast in Iran this year has been blamed on a fuel-air explosion after a train carrying petrol derailed.
Reaching around corners

The Soviet Union developed a wide range of thermobaric weapons, which were used by Russia in the Chechnya campaign of 1999. A US Marine Corps study, based on interviews with Russian officers and Chechens, concluded that they were capable of killing troops in bunkers and destroying buildings that hadn't been reinforced. "Walls and surfaces do not necessarily shield victims," notes a US training manual.
This prompted the US to rush out the BLU-118 "cave-buster" for use in Afghanistan in 2001. More thermobaric devices have been developed since, such as a new "Hellfire" anti-tank missile used in Iraq.
These weapons were widely publicised. "A thermobaric Hellfire missile can take out the first floor of a building without damaging the floors above," the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, told a press briefing on 14 May 2003. "It is capable of reaching around corners, striking enemy forces that hide in caves or bunkers."

There are signs that terrorists too are trying to create thermobaric weapons. For instance, in 2002 a tanker truck was used in a suicide attack on a synagogue in Tunisia, thought to be the work of Al-Qaida. Some experts think the way the fuel tanks were rigged with explosives shows a knowledge of fuel-air explosive techniques.
Designs for a fuel-air device were also acquired by the CIA from three alleged IRA members on trial in Colombia. The three are said to have been developing the bomb in conjunction with the country's FARC guerrilla group. "Although an IRA/Al-Qaida collaboration seems unlikely, the bottom line is that their respective manuals are probably in circulation," says David Ritzel, an explosives expert working for the DRDC.
Protection level

Defending buildings against such an attack would be extremely difficult. The deadliest conventional car-bomb attacks have been those where the attacker succeeded in getting a vehicle packed with explosives very close to the target.
To prevent this, concrete barriers have been placed around many buildings regarded as potential targets. But the barriers would have to be much further away than at present to provide the same level of protection against fuel-air devices of a similar size.

However, creating such devices poses far more technical challenges than making conventional bombs, says Stephen Murray, head of the DRDC's threat assessment group. Their aim is to develop software to predict how buildings will respond to thermobaric blasts and help design fortifications. Even small mistakes in the design or choice of materials can prevent fuel-air devices working, Murray says.
Unfortunately, terrorists could simply buy off-the-shelf thermobaric weapons on the black market. The Russians have used Shmel rocket launchers with thermobaric warheads for many years. They are available on the black market, and have turned up in the hands of the Cobra militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance.
The US Department of State has also accused one arms company of illegally supplying thermobaric weapons like these to both Iran and Iraq - a charge it has denied.
Western countries are developing similar weapons. The US created a bazooka with a thermobaric warhead called the SMAW-NE for the war in Iraq. China recently unveiled its own version, and the UK is also reported to be working on one - although the defence ministry insists that it is merely an "enhanced blast weapon".

David Hambling

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

They probably would not have scour the black market for thermobaric weapons when there are so many chemicals and gases that would fit the bill such as Ethylene Oxide which is found in many labs.

[OB Kenobi]

I think the dirty bomb threat is overrated, it requires way too much radioactive material to be practical for terrorists to use. So I'm filing "dirty bomb" in the Bush propaganda department.

[2RHPZ]

I think the dirty bomb threat is overrated, it requires way too much radioactive material to be practical for terrorists to use. So I'm filing "dirty bomb" in the Bush propaganda department.

Overrated? I agree. Bush propaganda? :roll:

Another article:

Pakistan's forgotten al-Qaeda nuclear link

By Kaushik Kapisthalam

Novelists Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, authors of such bestsellers*as City of Joy and Is Paris burning?, have just written a new novel titled Is New York Burning? whose plot involves al-Qaeda members, with help from a Pakistan army major, successfully smuggling a Pakistani nuclear device into New York and then using it to*try to blackmail the United States into stopping support for Israel.
The Pakistani jihadi group that plays a big part in the plot is called Lashkar-e-Tibi. Even fiction writers have now started connecting the dots*linking Pakistan's nuclear establishment, its home-grown jihad groups and the possibility of an al-Qaeda nuclear attack overseas. But*US authorities seem curiously blase about this threat and still appear to be content with the old shibboleths about the "inviolability" of Pakistan's nuclear program.
The ones who met Osama bin Laden
In late 2001, US officials investigating the activities of Osama bin Laden discovered that the al-Qaeda head had contacted some Pakistani nuclear experts for assistance in making a small nuclear device. US officials sought two veteran Pakistani nuclear scientists in particular, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, for interrogation. The two admitted working in Afghanistan in recent years, but said they*had only been*providing "charitable assistance" to Afghans.
Mahmood was no low-level scientist. He was one of Pakistan's foremost experts in the secret effort to produce plutonium for atomic weapons. In 1999 he publicly said that Pakistan should help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons. He also made some public statements in support of the Taliban movement. After more interrogation, both Mahmood and Majid admitted that they had*met with bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri during their visits to Afghanistan and held long "theoretical" discussions on nuclear weapons.
Then the trail went cold. After months in Pakistani custody, both Mahmood and Majid were quietly released. Fearing that Mahmood's charity organization, Ummah Tameer e-Nau, could be a front for al-Qaeda, the US government placed the entity in its terrorist list and designated Mahmood himself "a global terrorist". Pakistan's government never put the two scientists on trial, and they are free men today.
The ones who got away
In December 2001, the New York Times reported that while US authorities were investigating Mahmood and Majid, they found some links between al-Qaeda and two other Pakistani nuclear scientists, Suleiman Asad and Muhammed Ali Mukhtar. Both Asad and Mukhtar had long experience at two of Pakistan's most secret nuclear-weapons-related installations. However, before US investigators could reach them, Pakistan sent the two scientists to Myanmar on an unspecified "research project".
The New York Times also quoted Pakistani officials as saying that President General Pervez Musharraf personally telephoned one of Myanmar's military rulers to ask him to provide temporary asylum for the two nuclear specialists. In January 2002, the Wall Street Journal reported that Asad and Mukhtar were possibly aiding Myanmar's efforts to build a 10-megawatt nuclear "research reactor". Asad and Mukhtar are still in Myanmar, well away from US reach.
The Lashkar-Nuke link
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a terrorist group based in Muridke, Pakistan. Although founded by the chief promoter of the Afghan jihad and bin Laden mentor, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, LeT claims ousting India from Kashmir as its main goal. But experts say LeT shared training camps with al-Qaeda and that*many al-Qaeda-linked Afghan-Arabs have been found fighting for LeT in Indian-administered Kashmir. The LeT fought on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well.
An Australian named David Hicks, who was picked up by coalition forces in Afghanistan and who is now in Guantanomo prison in Cuba, was trained by LeT. LeT has also provided training for jihadis from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Chechnya. In December 2001, the US banned LeT after it was implicated in a terrorist attack on India's parliament. Pakistan subsequently banned LeT in January 2002, but allowed it to operate under a new name - Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Prior to being banned, LeT used to hold massive annual conclaves in Pakistan, preaching jihad against India, Israel and the United States. Today, it is widely believed that LeT is operating as a global al-Qaeda "franchisee", even though it is still active in Indian Kashmir.
In a sensational claim, French journalist and author Bernard Henri-Levy stated that Pakistan's disgraced "father" of the nuclear bomb, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, was in fact a member of LeT. What is definite is that Khan did attend the last openly held LeT moot, in April 2001, as an honored guest. Accompanying Khan on the dais was none other than Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the plutonium expert who met bin Laden. According to the South Asia Analysis Group, bin Laden himself was known to address LeT annual meets over the phone for many years, even when he was hiding in Afghanistan and Sudan.
Despite being banned, the Pakistani media have frequently reported that LeT has openly collected funds under its new name. Pakistani authorities have allowed LeT's leader or "emir", Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, to barnstorm Pakistan, calling for jihad against the United States, in particular. In the recent past, Saeed has stated in his public meetings and rallies that Pakistan's nuclear weapons should be used to benefit all Islamic nations and that Pakistan must share its nukes with such*nations*as Iran and Saudi Arabia. More alarming, in a 2002 statement Saeed released to the LeT website, he claimed that people loyal to his organization "control two nuclear missiles". He is claimed to have said that the two missiles with warheads would be used against "enemies of Islam".
In 2002, top al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida was arrested from a LeT safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Pakistani officials did not, however, arrest LeT leader Hameedullah Khan Niazi, who had housed Zubaida. In late 2003, the brother of Indonesian terrorist Hambali and many of his Indonesian and Malaysian associates were also arrested from a LeT-owned seminary in Karachi.
In what is now known in*the United States*as the "Virginia Jihad" conspiracy, nine terrorist suspects were recently arrested from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The men were later convicted on terrorism-related charges. As per the indictment, all were members of LeT and trained in LeT camps in Pakistan.*
Last October, a French-born terrorist named Willie Brigitte was arrested in connection with his actions in Australia. Brigitte admitted to be a member of LeT. Australian police later arrested a Pakistani architect - Faheem Lodhi, who was also a member of LeT, and was supposedly Brigitte's co-conspirator in a plot to conduct a major terrorist attack in Australia. Reports indicate that Lodhi's and Brigitte's target was supposedly the electrical grid. Other targets considered included the Lucas Heights nuclear research center outside Sydney and various military facilities and natural-gas pipelines. It is also known that both Lodhi and Brigitte received funds and took orders from a mid-to-high-level LeT member in Pakistan named Sheikh Sajid. More alarming, Brigitte told interrogators that he had personally seen a Chechen chemical-weapons expert named Abu Salah experiment with chemical weapons in an LeT camp in Pakistan.
Why the Pakistan threat is real
Despite all the ominous-sounding facts mentioned above, some readers might wonder*whether the Pakistan nuclear-terrorism threat is a credible one. Indeed, some analysts do feel that the idea of Pakistan's nuclear warheads falling into the hands of terrorist groups*such as*LeT is an exaggeration. After all, it is widely believed that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are under the secure safekeeping of the nation's army, the only institution in Pakistan that is supposedly free of al-Qaeda influence. But is that really so?
Just recently, Musharraf revealed that some "junior" Pakistani army and air force officers had colluded with al-Qaeda terrorists in the two attempts on his life*last December. The Pakistani newspaper the Daily Times revealed that the "junior officers" referred to by Musharraf may include an army captain, three majors, a lieutenant-colonel and a colonel. This is extremely significant. While many retired Pakistani generals and intelligence chiefs have openly associated with groups*such as*al-Qaeda, their actions have been glossed over because they weren't in active service. But when we know that serving Pakistani military officers have been conducting joint operations with al-Qaeda, the possibility of a Pakistani nuclear device falling into the hands of al-Qaeda appears more credible.
Even if al-Qaeda never gets hold of a Pakistani nuclear warhead, thanks to*US technical safeguards, the possibility of it building a Pakistani-designed radiation dispersal device or a "dirty bomb" looks plausible. A recent analysis by*US nuclear experts David Albright and Holly Higgins found strong evidence that Pakistani nuclear scientists Sultan Mahmood and Abdul Majid "provided significant assistance to al-Qaeda's efforts to make radiation dispersal devices". Therein lies the most overlooked Pakistani threat - the knowledge in the heads of nuclear experts sympathetic to the jihad movement, and jihadi groups with weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions*such as*LeT operating secure facilities and training camps in Pakistan with only the most minimal of restraints.
Assuming that the US might be secretly monitoring Pakistani nuclear fuel and weapons sites, such actions would not be enough to prevent, for instance, radioactive materials stolen from the former Soviet Union*by Chechen LeT members and delivered to Pakistan, packaged into a dirty bomb designed by a Pakistani nuclear scientist (or an improvised nuclear device based on a Pakistani warhead design) in an LeT compound and delivered by a Pakistani-trained Western citizen taking orders from a handler in Karachi or Lahore.
For those who are skeptical of such a scenario it is worthwhile to recall that there have been reports of every one of its individual elements over the past three years, including the smuggling of radioactive and fissile material in to the region.*This March, Tajik authorities arrested a man with a small quantity of plutonium that he allegedly planned to sell in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Indeed, Pakistan remains the single most important country of focus in preventing an attack using a dirty bomb or even an improvised nuclear device.
Even before September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda had been interested in launching suicide attacks on nuclear reactors, turning them in effect into huge dirty bombs. For instance, in a 2002 interview with alJazeera reporter Yosri Fouda at a secret location in Karachi, September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh claimed that the September 11 attacks were originally going to target nuclear reactors, but they "decided against it for fear it would go out of control". Scientists and engineers from Pakistan's nuclear program could provide essential advice that could make the difference between success and failure. For instance, Sultan Mahmood, who played an important role in the construction of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear reactor, could have given specific tips to terrorists on how to breach nuclear reactors.
Unlearning the lessons of September 11
This summer is slated to be a period of high tension for the West, the United States*in particular, with multiple threats of terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, according to US officials. As horrific as the September 11 attacks on*the US*were, many terrorism experts have been warning that the next al-Qaeda attacks could be much worse. Even as*the US*struggles to deal with the aftermath of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq, where the threat from weapons of mass destruction was highly ambiguous, it appears that*US policymakers are unresponsive to a more alarming threat from Pakistan.

Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance journalist based in the United States.

[usa320]

I highly doubt the terrorists ability to build thermobaric weapons.

However the threat of a radiological bomb is very real. The damage done would be more psycological than physical really.

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

I highly doubt the terrorists ability to build thermobaric weapons.
Can you give a reason why you think it would be difficult for terrorists to build thermobaric weapons I myself can't think of any that would stop me. :lol: