Nuclear Terrorism after 9/11

Robin M. Frost

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780415399920
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136624261
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The very mention of nuclear terrorism is enough to rouse strong reactions, and understandably so, because it combines the most terrifying weapons and the most threatening of people in a single phrase. The possibility that terrorists could obtain and use nuclear weapons deserves careful analysis, but discussion has all too often been contaminated with exaggeration, even hysteria. For example, it has been claimed that nuclear terrorism poses an 'existential threat' to the United States.

This Adelphi Paper develops a more measured analysis of the risk of terrorists detonating a true fission device. The problem is attacked from two perspectives: the considerable, possibly insurmountable, technical challenges involved in obtaining a functional nuclear weapon, whether 'home-made' or begged, borrowed or stolen from a state arsenal; and the question of the strategic, political and psychological motivations to 'go nuclear'. The conclusions are that nuclear terrorism is a less significant threat than is commonly believed, and that, among terrorists, Muslim extremists are not the most likely to use nuclear weapons.

CHAPTER ONE
The Nuclear Black Market

Nuclear terrorism constitutes neither a single entity nor a narrow category. Acts of nuclear terrorism could range from distributing harmless amounts of radioactive material by mail to the use of large and powerful RDDs, improvised nuclear devices (INDs) or even nuclear weapons appropriated from a state arsenal. Some forms of nuclear terrorism would do little or no physical harm; others could render cities uninhabitable or, in the worst case, kill people in their tens or even hundreds of thousands. The following is a rough hierarchy, from the lowest to the highest level of hazard. It is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, as the lethality of many events depends on a host of variables, some of them unknown and possibly even unknowable.

1. Theft or sabotage of nuclear items for demonstration or blackmail
2. Environmental contamination - of a city's water supply, for example - with radioactive material.
3. Attack on a nuclear reactor or other facility to spread alarm, but with no significant release of radiation.
4. Capture of a nuclear reactor for purposes of blackmail.
5. Sabotage of a reactor, storage dump or other nuclear facility short of meltdown or a fuel fire.
6. A credible, widely publicised nuclear threat that proves to be a hoax (a difficult item to rank, as its effects could in some respects be similar to a genuine attack).
7. Detonation of a RDD.
8. Damage to a spent fuel storage pool causing a fuel fire.
9. Detonation of a low-yield IND.
10. Damage to a nuclear reactor including core meltdown, containment breach and large-scale radiation release.
11. Detonation of a nuclear weapon from a state arsenal.¹

Almost every kind of nuclear terrorism begins with access to radioactive materials: without nuclear or radioactive materials, there can be (almost) no nuclear terrorism. This chapter considers the threats posed by 'loose' radioactive materials, from radioactive scrap to nuclear weapons, and the putative black market in which they are traded.

Figure I. Trafficking in radioactive materials, 1993-2004

Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) The IAEA Olicit Trafficking Database (ITDB) Fact Sheet for 1993-2004',http://www.iaea.org/NewsCcnter/Features/RadSources/PDF/charti.pdf.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB) is probably the most authoritative source on the topic, although there are others, including the Stanford Database on Nuclear Smuggling, Theft, and Orphan Radiation Sources (SDTO).² The ITDB defines 'trafficking' very broadly, to include the 'unauthorized acquisition, provision, possession, use, transfer, or disposal of nuclear material and other radioactive material, whether intentional or unintentional and with or without crossing international borders. It also includes unsuccessful or thwarted events and incidents involving the inadvertent loss of control of nuclear and other radioactive materials and the discovery of such uncontrolled materials'.³ The database also covers the broadest possible range of radioactive materials, including substances merely contaminated with radiation ('radioactive junk').

Figure 1 shows that trafficking in nuclear material peaked in 1994, but had declined to a steady level of around ten incidents a year by 1998. The majority of incidents involved natural uranium, depleted uranium or low-enriched uranium (LEU) reactor fuel (which is not weapons usable). Some episodes of theft and diversion of LEU have involved very large amounts. For example, in 1993 a metalworker at the Electrostal reactor-fuel manufacturing plant in Moscow Oblast diverted 115kg of uranium dioxide pellets, apparently because he was desperate for money to support his family, having not been paid for months.⁴ In 1992, an entire nuclear reactor fuel assembly containing more than 100kg of LEU was apparently driven out of the Ignalina nuclear-power plant in Lithuania tied to the bottom of a bus.⁵ Media reports concerning the fate of the material appeared sporadically over the next few years.⁶

Twenty confirmed incidents have involved highly enriched uranium (HEU)⁷ or plutonium-239 (Pu²³⁹);⁸ these are listed in Table 1. According to the IAEA, most 'featured very small quantities'.⁹ As of December 2004 (the most recent year for which the agency has released complete data), no trafficking incident known to the IAEA involved more than a very small fraction of the quantity required to build a weapon, and the number of those that have involved true weapons-grade fissile materials is debatable.¹⁰ The total for all IAEA-confirmed trafficking cases involving HEU for the decade from 1993 to 2003 was just 8.35kg. Even if it had all been weapons-grade material and all in one shipment, this would still have been about two-thirds short of the 25kg of HEU required for a basic bomb.¹¹ With the notable exception of of mixed plutonium-uranium oxide (MOX) reactor fuel seized at Munich airport in Germany in 1994, the quantities of plutonium known to have been trafficked have been minute.¹² The largest single haul of pure plutonium was a tiny pellet of extremely highly enriched, 'super-grade' metal seized at Tengen in Germany in 1994.¹³ The source of the substance remains unknown, although there are suspicions that it came from a Soviet weapons laboratory. The total amount of IAEA-confirmed plutonium trafficked between 1993 and 2003 was 374.3g, or less than one-twelfth of the amount needed for a basic bomb.

According to the Russian Analytical Center for Non-Proliferation, the Landshut and Munich airport events, as well as an incident in Moscow in May 1995 involving 1.7kg of HEU (possibly the same one listed by the IAEA as taking place in June 1995) were the result of law-enforcement stings.¹⁴

Table 1. IAEA-confirmed incidents involving HEU or Pu, 1993-2004

Date	Location	Material involved	Incident description
24/5/1993	Vilnius Lithuania	HEU, 1509	44 tons of beryllium including 140kg contaminated with HEU were discovered in the storage area of a bank. Beryllium was imported legally.
March 1994	St Petersburg, Russia	HEU, 2.972kg	An individual was arrested In possession of HEU, which he had stolen from a nuclear facility for sale.
10/5/1994	Tengen-Wiechs, Germany	Pu, 6.2g	The material was detected in a building during a police search.
13/6/1994	Landshut Germany	HEU, 0.795g	Police arrested a group In illegal possession of HEU.
25/7/1994	Munich, Germany	Pu, 0.24g	A small sample of PuO2–UO2 mixture was confiscated in an incident related to a larger seizure at Munich airport
10/8/1994	Munich airport, Germany	Pu, 363.4g	PuO2—UO2 mixture was seized at Munich airport.
14/12/1994	Prague, Czech Republic	HEU, 2.73kg	HEU was seized by police in Prague.
June 1995	Moscow, Russia	HEU, 1.7kg	An individual was arrested in possession of HEU stolen from a nuclear facility.
6/6/1995	Prague, Czech Republic	HEU, 0.415g	An HEU sample was seized by police in Prague.
8/6/1995	Ceske Budejovke, Czech Republic	HEU, 16.9g	An HEU sample was seized by police in Ceske Budejovice.
29/5/1999	Rousse, Bulgaria	HEU, 10g	Customs officials arrested a man trying to smuggle HEU at the Rousse customs border check point.
2/10/1999	Kara-Balta, Kyrgyzstan	Pu,1.49g	Two individuals were arrested trying to sell Pu.
19/4/2000	Batumi, Georgia	HEU, 770g	Four individuals were arrested in possession of HEU
16/9/2000	Tbilisi airport, Georgia	Pu, 0.4g	Nuclear material including Pu was seized by police at Tbilisi airport.
December 2000	Karlsruhe, Germany	Pu, 0.001g	Mixed radioactive materials including a minute quantity of plutonium were stolen from a former pilot reprocessing plant.
28/1/2001	Asvestochori, Greece	Pu, ~3g	245 small metal plates containing Pu were found in a buried cache in the Kourl forest near the village of Asvestochori.
16/7/2001	Paris, France	HEU, 0.5g	Three individuals trafficking in HEU were arrested in Paris. The perpetrators were seeking buyers for the material
28/01/2001	Asvestochori, Greece	Pu~3 g	245 small metal plates containing Pu were found in a buried cache in the Kouri forest near the Asvestochori village.
16/07/2001	Paris, France	HEU 0.5 g	Three individuals trafficking In HEU were arrested in Pans. The perpetrators were seeking buyers for the material.
26/03/2003	Sadahlo, Georgia	HEU ~170g	An individual was arrested attempting to illegally transport HEU across the border.

Source: IAEA Illicit Trafficking Database 'List of Confirmed Incidents Involving HEU or Pu', http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Features/RadSources/PDF/table1.pdf.

The only incident that may have involved enough nuclear material to make a bomb apparently took place in 1998 in Chelyabinsk Oblast in Russia, and reportedly involved 18.5kg of radioactive material. The case remains unclear, however. Although the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has twice reported an incident in Chelyabinsk,¹⁵ the National Intelligence Council (NIC)'s 2004 Annual Report to Congress on the Safety and Security of Russian Nuclear Facilities and Military stated that the Russian security services had prevented the theft, so the material never actually left the grounds.¹⁶ It also remains unclear whether the material in question was weapons-grade Pu, HEU or a precursor, such as natural or low-enriched uranium.

Since it was apparently thwarted, the Chelyabinsk incident do...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One The Nuclear Black Market
• Chapter Two Improvised Nuclear Devices
• Chapter Three Terrorist Psychology, Motivation and Strategy
• Chapter Four Terrorism and Nuclear Deterrence
• Conclusion
• Appendix Dirty Bombs: Radiological Dispersal and Emission Devices
• Notes