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Where the United States
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stands in protecting its citizens
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Stories by John Yaukey, Gannett News
Service
Conventional bombs
Powerful conventional explosives are
easily made from common materials such as fertilizer (ammonium
nitrate) and fuel oil, and easily deployed.
The United States makes 8 million tons of
ammonium nitrate a year, widely available for about a dime per
pound. Eighty 50-pound bags piled into a midsize truck —
essentially what was used in Oklahoma City — could topple
a large office building if detonated near a critical
weight-bearing juncture.
Commandeering and exploding one of the
world’s 25,000-plus nuclear warheads would require
breaching some of the tightest security on the planet, then
cracking the complex launch and detonation codes. Security
experts say this would be almost impossible in the
world’s known arsenals: the United States, Russia, China,
Britain, France, India, Israel and Pakistan. Pakistan’s
small arsenal, however, could fall into the hands of Islamic
radicals if they ever succeed in toppling the
nation’s fragile secular government.
RED FLAG
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin
Laden allegedly tried to purchase suitcase
nuclear weapons from the Chechen mafia,
according to The New York Times.
nuclear weapons from the Chechen mafia,
according to The New York Times.
The United States and former Soviet Union
made hundreds of “suitcase’’ nuclear
weapons for destroying fortified military targets during the
Cold War. These weapons have the power of the atom bombs
dropped on Japan. Not all of the Soviet suitcase weapons have
been accounted for, according to Congress, but detonating one
would require cracking a tough security code.
Homemade nuclear weapons remain a remote
threat, at least for now, because they require world-class
expertise to make and fissile material that’s difficult
to acquire. That said, the Department of Energy estimates that
only 41 percent of Russia’s fissile material has been
properly secured.
The CIA has said al-Qaida is trying to
acquire a nuclear weapon.
Dirty radiation bombs
Dozens of countries, including the United
States, cannot account for significant amounts of the
radioactive material needed to make a dirty bomb, and many have
inadequate programs to track those materials, according to the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
Dirty bombs are conventional explosives
laced with radioactive material that could spread potentially
lethal radiation over several city blocks.
Interactive documentary:
CLEARING THE SKIES
CLEARING THE SKIES
Interactive documentary:
A YEAR OF RECOVERY
If terrorists succeed at producing a
dirty bomb, it would likely contain industrial radioactive
material that slipped through regulatory cracks or was never
under regulatory control, rather than radioactive material
stolen from a weapons facility, experts say. These
“orphaned’’ radioactive sources are a
particular problem in the newly independent states that made up
the former Soviet Union. In the Republic of Georgia alone, more
than 280 once-missing radioactive sources have been recovered
since 1997, raising questions about how many are still missing.
RED FLAG
In 1996, Chechen rebels left a container
of cesium-137 in a Moscow park, but it was never detonated.
All contents copyright 2002,
Gannett News Service
More than half of the nearly 1,500
radioactive sources lost by U.S. companies since 1996 never
have been recovered, according to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
A European Union study estimated that
roughly 70 radioactive sources are lost annually in Europe.
Once a radioactive source is obtained, making a dirty bomb
would require relatively little expertise.
Most of the damage from a dirty bomb would
be psychological and economic rather than medical. A large
dirty bomb could leave huge tracts of a city uninhabitable for
weeks or longer.
All contents copyright 2002,
Gannett News Service