NUKES WITHOUT NATIONS:
From
a lofty view there is justice in the world where the weak become stronger , and the strong have no
choice but to accommodate the gain. Practically speaking , however, the
poor , the poor , for a host of reasons
, are more likely to use their nuclear
weapons than the great powers have been
, at least since the United States
terrorized Japan . At the extreme is the
possibility , entirely real, that one or
two nuclear weapons will pass into the hands of the new stateless guerrillas , the jihadist
, who offer none of the retaliatory
targets that have so far
underlain the nuclear peace---no
permanent infrastructure to protect , no
capital city , and indeed no country called home. The danger first arose in the chaos of the post –Soviet Russia in
the 1990s , and it took full form after
the September 11 attacks of 2001.
The U.S. government’s subsequent
manipulation of the fear is
deplorable and tragic : far better to
accept the risk soberly , and to examine it realistically , than to dash
around making blind wars , limiting liberties
and commerce, and generally
self-destructing in advance. Nonetheless
the fact remains: with so little
to lose from nuclear retaliation
, and it need of ever more dramatic acts
in their war against the West, these jihadists are the people who would not hesitate to detonate a nuclear device.
Of
course they may also pursue their
war in other spectacular ways,
including small-scale bombings , poison-gas assaults
in enclosed public spaces, and
more difficult biological attacks.
Within the nominally nuclear
realm , they may choose to set off “
dirty bombs,” which would use
conventional explosives not to induce a fission reaction , but to
scatter ordinary , detectable
radioactive materials through a few city blocks , causing public
hysteria—all the more so in societies
where even outdoor tobacco
smoke is called a threat .
Dirty bombs would be mere nuisance bombs if people
would keep their calm . But of course
people will not. The potential effectiveness of such a device was loudly signaled by the clamor about the dangerous dust
around the World Trade Centre site,
and it was reinforced more
recently by the outraged new reaction to an attempt by a U.S . agency to raise the acceptable threshold
of radiation for
reinhabiting an area after a dirty-bomb attack. The outrage must have been noticed
by the people who count. Furthermore they must know that even
just in the United States there are large quantities
of nonfissionable but highly
radioactive materials contained within machines , primarily in
hospitals and at industrial sites , and
that the machines, because they are
expensive , are sometimes stolen for resale. In fact in the United States alone there are hundreds of thefts
of radioactive material every
year. As to why no dirty bomb
has yet been assembled and used,
analysts provide earnest explanations, but largely to avoid
throwing up their hands in wonder.
In
any event a true atomic bomb –a fission
device such as the one that destroyed Hiroshima ---is an entirely
different weapon, far more difficult to obtain or build , but hugely more effective if used. Beyond the immediate havoc that would be caused by the blast , the ongoing reactions
to the 9/11 attacks offer the
merest indication of the massive self-devouring
that would subsequently occur. In Western capitals today there are quiet people, serious people , who, while
recognizing the low probability of such an attack , nonetheless worry that
the successful use of just a single atomic bomb could bring the established order to its knees—or lay it
out flat.
If
you were a terrorist intent on carrying out a nuclear strike , you could not
count on acquiring an existing device.
These are held as critical national assets in fortified facilities
guarded by elite troops , and they would
be extremely difficult to get at,
or to buy. Some reports suggest the contrary , particularly because of rumors , about the penetration of
organized crime into the Russian nuclear forces, and about portable satchel
nukes, or “ suitcase bombs,” which are said
to have been built for the KGB in
the late 1970s and 1980s , and then lost into the global black market
following the Soviet breakup
a few years later. The
existence of suitcase bombs has never been proved , however, and
there has never been a single verified
case, anywhere , of the theft of any sort of nuclear weapon. Thefts may
nevertheless have occurred , particularly during the chaos of the mid-1990s ,
but nuclear weapons require regular
maintenance , and any of them still lingering on the market today would likely have now become duds.
Conversely, because these time limitations are well-known , the very lack of a
terrorist nuclear strike thus far hints
that nothing useful was stolen in the first place . Either way , even if the
seller could provide a functioning
device , nuclear weapons in Russia and
other advanced states are protected by electronic
locks that would defeat almost any attempt
to trigger an explosion . Of course you could look to countries where less rigorous safe-guards
are in place, but no
government handles its nuclear
arsenal loosely or would dare to create the impression that it is using surrogates
to fight its nuclear wars. Even the military leaders of Pakistan , who have repeatedly
demonstrated their willingness to sell
nuclear weapons technology abroad, would balk at allowing a constructed bomb to escape—if only because of the certainty that after the blast
, the trail would be backtracked , and
they would be held to account. The same concerns will almost certainly now constrain Iran.
If
you were a terrorist , all this might give you pause to take your bearings. You
would need to distinguish between your
own needs as a stateless fighter , and those of conventional governmental
proliferators. Even the youngest nuclear
weapon states ---such as Pakistan or North Korea---have little use for just or
two bombs . To assume a convincing posture of counterstrike and deterrence , or
simply to exhibit nuclear muscle , they require a significant arsenal that can be renewed and improved and
grown across time. This in turn requires
that they build large scale industrial
facilities to produce warhead
fuel, which cannot be purchased in
sufficient quantity on the international
black market to sustain a nuclear –weapons production line. Manufacturing high –quality
fuel is still the most difficult
the most difficult and important
part of any nuclear program. It is something that a stateless group simply
cannot do.
But
this is not necessarily a problem.
Indeed. Giving up on the manufacture of fuel would largely remove you
from the reach of the NPT and
other nonproliferation efforts, which
focus on interrupting the spread
of weapons at that stage. Furthermore ,
an excess of weapons –ready fissile
material is already stockpiled in the world today, of which you require only
a small amount. Keep in mind that unlike governments with territory to protect
, you can attack with near impunity and accomplish your purposes
with merely one or two garage
–made bombs . Surely you can find a way to buy or steal the necessary fuel.
It
would be helpful at this early point to consider exactly what kind of
fuel to puruse. For ordinary fission bombs , there are really only two choices
–either plutonium or highly enriched
uranium . Plutonium is a man-made
element produced by uranium reactors, from which it emerges initially mixed in with the other radioactive waste , but is separable through chemical processes. There are
several forms of it , including one
purpose made for bombs. Armies favour
plutonium because it is highly
fissionable and can be made to go
critical in small quantities,
thereby lending itself to
miniaturization of weapons. Miniaturization has obvious attractions, but it requires a
level of engineering
sophistication , related mostly to the efficiency of nuclear chain
reactions, that lies beyond the
capabilities of a small terrorist team.
And miniaturization is not that
important for the purposes at hand. You can hit New York or London
well enough with a car-sized device locked into a shipping container or loaded into a private airplane behind
a couple of dedicated pilots. Furthermore, ignoring the question of size , plutonium has a couple of negatives for an operation
such as yours. For technical reasons it is not
suited for use in a basic cannon type
bomb and demands instead the explosive symmetry of a Nagasaki –style implosion device.
Building an implosion device would introduce complexities
you would be better off avoiding , particularly without a place and the time to test the design. And plutonium is difficult to handle --- sufficiently radioactive
to require shielding , awkward to transport without setting off radiation detectors , and extremely dangerous
even in minute quantities if it is breathed in, swallowed, or absorbed into the
body through a cut or open wound. Plenty of people in this world would willingly die for the chance to nuke
the United States, but within the limited pool of technicians who might
join your effort , it would be impractical to expect so much . Plutonium might
work as the pollutant spread by a dirty
bomb, but for the purposes of a simple fission device , plutonium is out.
The
alternative is highly enriched uranium , or HEU , containing more than 90 percent of the fissionable isotope , U-235. Operationally it is wonderful stuff—the perfect fuel for a garage made
bomb. During processing , it takes the form
of an invisible gas , a liquid, a powder, and finally a dull gray
metal that is cool and dry to the
touch. It has approximately the toxicity of lead and would sicken shop workers who
swallowed traces of it or breathed in its dust , but otherwise it is not immediately dangerous and, indeed, is so mildly radioactive that it can be picked up with bare hands , transported in a backpack ,
and when , lightly shielded , taken past most radiation monitors
without setting off alarms. In small masses HEU is so benign that you
could sleep with it under your pillow if you so desired . However, you could
not just casually pile it up. The reason is that the atoms of U-235 occasionally and
spontaneously split apart , and in doing
so they fire off neutrons, which within
a sufficient mass of material could split
enough other atoms to cause a blossoming
chain reaction. Such a reaction
would not amount to a military
style nuclear explosion , but it could
certainly release enough energy to take out a few city blocks.
At
low end of HEU , which is considered to
be 20 percent enrichment , nearly a ton
would have to be combined before a
stockpile could spontaneously ignite.
At the high end , which is the weapon grade enrichment of 90 percent or greater , less than one hundred
pounds could do the trick.
Should
a terrorist be able to acquire two bricks of weapon-grade HEU, each weighing
fifty pounds: how far apart would he
have to keep them ? A yard would be enough.
Since
the breakup of the Soviet Union , the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
has reported seventeen officially
declared cases of trafficking in
plutonium or HEU , generally Russian
made. This is certainly an undercount ,
though perhaps by a smaller factor than is usually said. The activity was
strongest in the early and mid 1990s ,
when it seemed to be directed toward a
half imagined network of arms dealers in Central
and Western Europe. The reported incidents then tapered off for a few years , but they resumed in 1998
and have continued intermittently ever since. At the same time there seems to
have been a shift
in the smuggling routes,
away from Western Europe , and across
the southern Caucasus into Turkey. Turkey is world’s grand bazaar , and given
its geographic position overlooking the Middle East , it is hardly
surprising that in recent years people have gone there looking to sell their nuclear goods.
It
turns out that the world is rich with
fresh , safe, user friendly HEU ---a
global accumulation ( outside the world’s collective 30 k nuclear warheads) that is dispersed among
hundreds of sites and further
separated into nicely transportable , necessarily sub critical
packages. The combined HEU amounts to over a thousand metric tons . A
thousand metric tons is 2,205,623 pounds. That represents a lot of fissile material lying around , when only a hundred pounds are needed. The
practical question is how to pick some up. Although almost all HEU is in some manner guarded , it might nonetheless be acquired
in many countries , and probably
nowhere better than in Russia. The
U.S. government reacted rapidly to a
perception of chaos and opportunity in post-Soviet nuclear affairs and in 1993 launched an ambitious complex
of “ cooperative” programs with
all the former Soviet states to lessen the chance that nuclear
weapons might end up in the wrong
hands . The programs have blossomed into the largest part of
American aid to Russia , amounting so far to several billion dollars . There is the
unidentified whiff of a protection racket here---of U.S. taxpayers paying off the Russians to please not frighten them, but by the
profligate standards of government spending , the money has been well used.
These tasks have by now almost been
completed in the outlying nations –a success directly
related to the abandonment of nuclear weapons. But of course the centre of the effort is in Russia , where
for exactly the opposite reason much work remains to be done.
Nukes sans Nations--How terrorists can make a bomb!!