Weapon of Terror – NOT By Gordon Prather
According to Attorney
General Ashcroft, Jose Padilla -- al Qaeda 'jihadist' and Illinois reform school
grad -- learned how to construct a radiological dispersal device (RDD) by
surfing the Internet. Incredible. Much of the stuff that Google
dredges up on any subject is either wrong or outdated. How would Padilla know
what to cull? Who to believe? For example, the New York Times has such an
anti-nuclear bias that you dare not take as gospel truth anything you read there
about RDDs. What might Padilla have
'learned' about RDDs by surfing the Internet? Well, according to the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the Iraqis actually constructed and tested
three prototype 3000-lb RDD bombs. Much of that weight was for shielding
bomb-makers, bomb-testers and bomb-droppers from radiation, even though each
bomb only contained about two Curies of radiological materials.
[By way of comparison, a
radioactive Cobalt-60 source used for cancer treatment is typically several
hundred Curies. A typical nuclear reactor fuel assembly -- even after a ten-year
under-water cool-off period -- is still tens of thousands of Curies strong.]
The Iraqis detonated one
their RDDs on the ground, and dropped the other two from
aircraft. The result?
Three radioactive holes in
the ground. Very little of the
radiological material was dispersed outside the hole. Certainly not enough to
incapacitate troops. As for terror? The radiological material -- inside and
outside the crater -- can't be seen, felt or heard. It won't kill you. Won't
even make you sick. So, in 1988, the Iraqis gave up on the development of RDDs
for battlefield use. The war hawks claim that
Saddam has continued to work on RDDs and intends to supply them to terrorists.
To do that, Saddam would have to whip up a fresh batch of radiological
materials. But, wait a minute. He can't. The reactors he used to make his first
batch have all been destroyed and cannot be rebuilt. Rats. But how about the rave
reviews given RDDs on websites maintained by foes of nuclear power? They claim
that if reactor 'spent' fuel is reprocessed, terrorists can steal the
concentrated highly radioactive fission products -- or the weakly radioactive
Plutonium itself -- to make RDDs. Stealing spent-fuel --
reprocessed or unprocessed -- is a good way to commit suicide. Even if the
terrorist stayed one meter away from an unshielded spent fuel assembly, he would
receive a lethal dose of gamma rays in less than three minutes. Of course, he
wouldn't die instantly. Might take a day or two. Not long enough to make and
deliver a RDD, however. Double
Rats. Well, how about using
Plutonium? Plutonium carefully dispersed can kill humans when ingested, but
relatively high doses are required. Dogs have been forced to ingest the human
equivalent of about 100 milligrams of Plutonium. Result? The dogs die from
pulmonary edema within 10 days. That's bad, but ingestion of that much cyanide
would kill you within 10 seconds. Human inhalation of about 20
milligrams might result in death within a month. According to W. G. Sutcliffe et
al at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, in order to ingest that much, a person
would have to breathe air containing 20 milligrams per cubic meter of Plutonium
particles of exactly the right size for at least an hour. If a terrorist explosively
dispersed a kilogram of Plutonium -- which is a lot of Plutonium -- then the
volume of air containing 20 milligrams per cubic meter would only be 66-ft on a
side. Of course, if the kilogram of Plutonium was dispersed outside or in a
mall, then the Plutonium particles wouldn't remain confined to that cube of air.
Air currents would further disperse the particles. It's one thing to make dogs
in cages acutely ill, but quite another to kill -- or even terrorize --
thousands of mall-rats with a RDD. If you don't tell them they've been exposed
to a RDD, they won't know they're supposed to be terrorized. If you do tell
them, they probably won't believe you. Contrary to what the New York Times and
the anti-nuclear websites proclaim, a RDD is a non-starter as a weapon of
terror. But don't stop worrying.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz assures us that 'enemy combatant' Padilla
was also considering other forms of terrorist activity. Like what? Well, maybe
dispersing cyanide. Padilla returned to this country last month about the same
time banditos stole 10 tons of sodium cyanide down Mexico way. They haven't
recovered all of it yet, have they? Or caught the banditos who did it?
************************************************************************ The Dirty Secret of 'Dirty
Bombs' By KHIDHIR
HAMZA The Wall Street
Journal, June 12,
2002 The arrest of a "dirty bomb"
suspect in Chicago has focused attention once again on al Qaeda. But it would be
a mistake to ignore possible state links, especially with Saddam
Hussein. During Iraq's long war with Iran it became clear that terrorizing the Iranian troops by using chemical weapons was much more effective than all the artillery and aerial bombardment that we could muster. Newly transferred to the Military Industrialization Corp. headed by Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, I discovered that a team from the Atomic Energy Commission was already working on radiation weapons on the theory that they could achieve the same effect. It was 1987 and Iran's troops were entrenched in Iraq's only seaport, Fao. No amount of bombardment could dislodge them. The trick was to cut off their supply lines by contaminating the border region with Iran. Recognizing that this was
wartime, and thousands were dying in battles daily, I could not immediately
dismiss the idea. Not having a powerful enough reactor, the Atomic Energy team
resorted to using reactor materials that had already been irradiated, such as
the Zirconium in the reactor channels. They could not use the spent reactor fuel
since it was checked regularly by the international inspectors. But a test was
made in a desert region after enough radioactive material was assembled. As
expected, the radioactive materials dispersed too fast and the lethal zone was
almost nonexistent outside the blast area. Within a few days there was no more
than background radiation outside a very small area. Another test gave the same
results and the project was dropped. But it was recognized at the
time that while a dirty bomb is not an effective weapon of war, it remains an
effective weapon of terror. A contaminated building is a different story than an
explosion in the desert sands. Sure enough, I started hearing reports that Iraqi
intelligence was inviting some of our nuclear chemists to inquire about how much
is a lethal dose and what are the best sources of radiation. They soon realized
that the best way to kill someone with radiation was not to spread it widely
over a big area; a person could wander through a radiated area for years without
noticeable effects. But if someone inhales radioactive materials such as
plutonium dust even in tiny quantities, he will most probably be doomed to
disease and death. Thus it's much more effective to release radioactive
materials, not in the desert, but in a confined environment such as
a building where it's more
likely to poison people. Too busy at the time
pursuing the nuclear weapons option, Atomic Energy personnel were stopped from
meeting intelligence experts. However, I am sure the intelligence agency pursued
the subject more diligently by creating its own research team. Thus I was not
surprised at the recent news that a defector from the Mukhabarat, Iraq's
intelligence organization, was part of a team buying Russian radioactive
material routed through an African country. Nuclear materials were handled in a
very cavalier fashion in Iraq. Radioactive materials were carried in personal
cars without much protection most of the time. Neutron sources for oil well
logging (a method of studying the composition of potential bore holes) were
dispersed without much training, leading to some accidents that resulted in
large contaminated areas. My guess is that if the U.S.
nuclear industry is missing some materials, the story is much worse in countries
like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Pakistan and the former Soviet republics. This creates
an environment in which countries can claim lack of discipline of their workers
as a cover for many missing radiation sources. The only serious controls over
the smuggling of radioactive materials out of Russia now are the many sting
operations by the Russian intelligence services rather than the actual control
over the materials themselves. However, such operations are much less in
evidence in the other former Soviet republics. Thus, according to one Russian
expert, there are more sellers than buyers of nuclear materials in these
countries. This environment is ideal
for countries like Iraq to train and support a terrorist operation using
radiation weapons with complete deniability. If anthrax spores were used to
terrorize the U.S., plutonium particles are more effective. No high technology
is needed to create plutonium dust and once tiny quantities of plutonium are
lodged in the lungs, there is no known cure. Most probably the victim will not
even know that he is afflicted till it is too late. There will be no measurable
radiation emanating from his body since the emitted radiation from plutonium is
short-range. His lung tissues will absorb the radiation, blocking it from being
detected by outside detectors. Thus, unlike anthrax, detection is much harder.
And plutonium is much more available in spent reactor fuel. Restricting the
lookout for this source of terrorism to al Qaeda is taking the easy way out. No
matter how much their caves and former dwellings were searched, all that was
found were some primitive documents about nuclear radiation. The real expertise
-- and the real stockpiles of nuclear material -- remain in countries like Iraq
and Iran. With Afghanistan removed as a safe haven, terrorist training grounds
and sources of expertise have to come from these countries. It is time to face
the real problem and deal with it. Mr. Hamza, former director
of Iraq's nuclear program, is president of the Council on Middle Eastern
Affairs. =============================================================== Dirty Bomb --- Problems for
Terrorists By S. Fred SingerLetter to Editor, Wash
Times (published on June 13, 2002) With all the current concern
about “dirty bombs,” here are a few things that should be kept in mind, based on
simple calculations: First, it’s the explosion that kills not the radioactivity. Although prolonged exposure can make you sick, you may not want to stick around long enough for that to happen. Second, assembling the
radioactive material is almost sure to kill any terrorist. After all, a square mile of
contamination needs to be compressed into less than a few cubic feet. That’s a several million-fold
concentration. And the stuff would
get so hot; it would melt most containers. There are ways to get around
such technical difficulties, but they are not easy. Then again, terrorists can spread
radioactivity more slowly – without using a bomb to disperse it – and achieve
almost the same psychological effects. ************************************************************************
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