Post by Wayne Hall on Sept 15, 2017 23:10:24 GMT -5
Robin Frost:
Introduction to “Nuclear Terrorism after 9/11”[/font]
This paper takes a position that runs counter to the views on nuclear terrorism expressed by many politicians and academics, as well as the media. It argues that the risk of nuclear terrorism, especially true nuclear terrorism employing bombs powered by nuclear fission, is overstated and that popular wisdom on the topic is significantly flawed. There are technical, psychological and strategic grounds for this assertion, and the paper will deal with each of these categories in turn. At the same time, there are good reasons for concern about the state of nuclear security worldwide, and nothing in this paper should be read as suggesting that there is any cause for complacency. Far from it: serious efforts are required to improve the situation. Radioactive materials, and potential targets of nuclear terrorism, such as reactor complexes, must be better protected.
A set of implicit or explicit assumptions about nuclear terrorism underlies a good deal of the current discourse on the topic. Some of the key assumptions are given below. All of these assumptions are questionable, and several are simply false. The point Karl-Heinz Kamp made nine years ago applies just as well today: if all these assumptions were true, why is it that terrorists still do not possess nuclear explosive devices?
• The Russian nuclear arsenal, inherited from the Soviet Union, is so poorly secured that it has become an enormous “Nukes-R-Us”, staffed by a corrupt, demoralized and underpaid military, and patronized by terrorists and their criminal henchmen.
• There is a thriving international black market in nuclear weapons and materials.
• The plans and technical information necessary to build a functional nuclear weapon are widely available.
• Some so-called rogue states, especially Pakistan and North Korea (or entities within them) are willing to give or sell nuclear weapons to terrorists, if they have not already done so.
• The greatest potential threat is from terrorists using true nuclear weapons, but “dirty bombs” could also be extremely dangerous, especially if they use substances such as uranium or plutonium.
• All terrorists, but most especially the anti-Western jihadist Islamist groups generally known as al-Qaeda, are irrational, mentally ill killers who engage in terrorism to satisfy their bloodlust.
• As a corollary to the above, terrorists are uniformly eager to obtain, and willing to use, any and all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) including nuclear weapons.
• Nuclear terrorism constitutes an “existential threat” to the United States and other potential target states.
In brief, the rebuttals to these assumptions can be put as follows:
• Russian nuclear weapons. Russian nuclear weapons appear to be under the generally good control of élite troops. There is no evidence in open-source material that a single nuclear warhead, from any national arsenal or another source, has ever made its way into the world’s illegal arms bazaars, let alone into terrorist hands. No actual or aspiring nuclear-weapons state has ever claimed to have nuclear weapons without having all of the technical infrastructure necessary to produce them ab initio though they could, if the “loose nukes” arguments were sound, easily have bought a few on the black market. Even the extravagant sums sometimes mentioned as the alleged asking price for stolen weapons would be tiny fractions of the amount required to develop an indigenous nuclear weapons capability, yet circumstances seem to have compelled states to choose the more expensive course.
• The nuclear black market. There is no evidence in the open-source literature of a true international black market in nuclear materials. Virtually all known cases of nuclear theft or smuggling have involved amateurs hoping for rich returns, despite the seeming absence of anyone interested in buying the material. To the extent that a market exists, it is almost entirely driven by supply; there appears to be no true demand, except where the buyers were government agents running a sting. Organized crime, with one known exception, has not been involved in nuclear trafficking. Even the notorious A.Q. Khan network concentrated on nuclear technology, especially centrifuge uranium enrichment, rather than fissile materials, although there have been suggestions that Khan, a Pakistani nuclear engineer, sold uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for enrichment, to Libya.
• Do-it-yourself nuclear weapons. It is most improbable that any terrorist group could become a do-it-yourself nuclear power: unlike rough conceptual outlines, the detailed plans and engineering drawings necessary to build a bomb are not easily available. It would also be very difficult, if not effectively impossible, to acquire sufficient quantities of suitable fissile materials. The expertise and facilities required to build a functional bomb, even a crude one, are of a higher order than those possessed by any known terrorist organization. Developing nuclear weapons requires state-level resources, and the process takes years.
• Dirty bombs and radiation dispersal devices. Dirty bombs (also known as radiation dispersal devices or RDDs), are unlikely to kill anyone immediately, except via the direct effects of the conventional explosives involved. Neither uranium nor plutonium is particularly radioactive in pure form, and the widespread belief that plutonium is the world’s most toxic substance is an outright myth, although both metals are toxic to some degree. Other radioactive materials, such as cesium-137 or strontium-90 could be dangerous, although they might kill or disable any would-be dirty bomb maker before they could complete their work. Depending on the substance used and the size of the radiation release, a RDD might cause a small statistical increase in cancer deaths among those affected, although it might never be possible to attribute individual deaths to the RDD. will or technical capacity to do so is limited and unconvincing
• State sponsors of nuclear terrorism. Nuclear-weapon states, even ‘rogues’, are most unlikely to be foolish enough to hand nuclear weapons, which are among their dearest national treasures, over to such unreliable, unpredictable and potentially dangerous characters as terrorists, especially when the chances of a suspected state sponsor suffering nuclear retaliation and annihilation are so good and so blindingly obvious.
• Psychotic terrorist killers. The overwhelming majority of terrorists are as psychologically healthy, rational and intelligent as the rest of us; indeed, mentally ill terrorists would be far less dangerous and much easier to deal with. Terrorists are typically neither psychopathic nor psychotic, nor are they driven by mere bloodlust. Furthermore, terrorists have not historically been particularly interested in WMD, and no terrorist use of WMD of any kind has resulted in mass casualties, unless the airliners used in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 (‘9/11’) count as weapons of mass destruction. States, on the other hand, have used WMD to great effect. This is not to say that terrorists are not interested in killing large numbers of people; clearly, some are. Much of the concern about nuclear terrorism derives from the reasonable fear that al-Qaeda might be planning an attack even more lethal than those of /11. However, neither al-Qaeda nor any of the organizations linked to it has ever used WMD, and the evidence that they have the will or technical capacity to do so is limited and unconvincing.
• An existential threat. When applied to nuclear terrorism, the phrase ‘existential threat’ implies that a state such as the United States could be destroyed by terrorists wielding nuclear weapons. Yet to destroy the United States or any other large industrial state, in the sense of inflicting such damage to its government, economy, population and infrastructure that it could no longer function as a coherent political and economic entity, would require a large number of well-placed nuclear weapons with yields in the tens or hundreds of kilotons. It is unlikely that terrorists could successfully obtain, emplace and detonate a single nuclear weapon, while no plausible radiological device or devices could do any significant damage on a national level.
These arguments do not mean that the possibility of true nuclear terrorism can be ignored. Even a miniscule risk is too high, given the nature of the threat. But fear of that most terrifying image, a terrorist with an atom bomb, should not blind us to the need to prevent and defend against the much more probable forms of nuclear terrorism: attacks on nuclear reactors or other elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, and RDDs powered by industrial or medical radiation sources. By the same token, for all the focus on jihadist Islamic terrorism, other groups might, under certain circumstances, be more dangerous.
Introduction to “Nuclear Terrorism after 9/11”[/font]
This paper takes a position that runs counter to the views on nuclear terrorism expressed by many politicians and academics, as well as the media. It argues that the risk of nuclear terrorism, especially true nuclear terrorism employing bombs powered by nuclear fission, is overstated and that popular wisdom on the topic is significantly flawed. There are technical, psychological and strategic grounds for this assertion, and the paper will deal with each of these categories in turn. At the same time, there are good reasons for concern about the state of nuclear security worldwide, and nothing in this paper should be read as suggesting that there is any cause for complacency. Far from it: serious efforts are required to improve the situation. Radioactive materials, and potential targets of nuclear terrorism, such as reactor complexes, must be better protected.
A set of implicit or explicit assumptions about nuclear terrorism underlies a good deal of the current discourse on the topic. Some of the key assumptions are given below. All of these assumptions are questionable, and several are simply false. The point Karl-Heinz Kamp made nine years ago applies just as well today: if all these assumptions were true, why is it that terrorists still do not possess nuclear explosive devices?
• The Russian nuclear arsenal, inherited from the Soviet Union, is so poorly secured that it has become an enormous “Nukes-R-Us”, staffed by a corrupt, demoralized and underpaid military, and patronized by terrorists and their criminal henchmen.
• There is a thriving international black market in nuclear weapons and materials.
• The plans and technical information necessary to build a functional nuclear weapon are widely available.
• Some so-called rogue states, especially Pakistan and North Korea (or entities within them) are willing to give or sell nuclear weapons to terrorists, if they have not already done so.
• The greatest potential threat is from terrorists using true nuclear weapons, but “dirty bombs” could also be extremely dangerous, especially if they use substances such as uranium or plutonium.
• All terrorists, but most especially the anti-Western jihadist Islamist groups generally known as al-Qaeda, are irrational, mentally ill killers who engage in terrorism to satisfy their bloodlust.
• As a corollary to the above, terrorists are uniformly eager to obtain, and willing to use, any and all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) including nuclear weapons.
• Nuclear terrorism constitutes an “existential threat” to the United States and other potential target states.
In brief, the rebuttals to these assumptions can be put as follows:
• Russian nuclear weapons. Russian nuclear weapons appear to be under the generally good control of élite troops. There is no evidence in open-source material that a single nuclear warhead, from any national arsenal or another source, has ever made its way into the world’s illegal arms bazaars, let alone into terrorist hands. No actual or aspiring nuclear-weapons state has ever claimed to have nuclear weapons without having all of the technical infrastructure necessary to produce them ab initio though they could, if the “loose nukes” arguments were sound, easily have bought a few on the black market. Even the extravagant sums sometimes mentioned as the alleged asking price for stolen weapons would be tiny fractions of the amount required to develop an indigenous nuclear weapons capability, yet circumstances seem to have compelled states to choose the more expensive course.
• The nuclear black market. There is no evidence in the open-source literature of a true international black market in nuclear materials. Virtually all known cases of nuclear theft or smuggling have involved amateurs hoping for rich returns, despite the seeming absence of anyone interested in buying the material. To the extent that a market exists, it is almost entirely driven by supply; there appears to be no true demand, except where the buyers were government agents running a sting. Organized crime, with one known exception, has not been involved in nuclear trafficking. Even the notorious A.Q. Khan network concentrated on nuclear technology, especially centrifuge uranium enrichment, rather than fissile materials, although there have been suggestions that Khan, a Pakistani nuclear engineer, sold uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for enrichment, to Libya.
• Do-it-yourself nuclear weapons. It is most improbable that any terrorist group could become a do-it-yourself nuclear power: unlike rough conceptual outlines, the detailed plans and engineering drawings necessary to build a bomb are not easily available. It would also be very difficult, if not effectively impossible, to acquire sufficient quantities of suitable fissile materials. The expertise and facilities required to build a functional bomb, even a crude one, are of a higher order than those possessed by any known terrorist organization. Developing nuclear weapons requires state-level resources, and the process takes years.
• Dirty bombs and radiation dispersal devices. Dirty bombs (also known as radiation dispersal devices or RDDs), are unlikely to kill anyone immediately, except via the direct effects of the conventional explosives involved. Neither uranium nor plutonium is particularly radioactive in pure form, and the widespread belief that plutonium is the world’s most toxic substance is an outright myth, although both metals are toxic to some degree. Other radioactive materials, such as cesium-137 or strontium-90 could be dangerous, although they might kill or disable any would-be dirty bomb maker before they could complete their work. Depending on the substance used and the size of the radiation release, a RDD might cause a small statistical increase in cancer deaths among those affected, although it might never be possible to attribute individual deaths to the RDD. will or technical capacity to do so is limited and unconvincing
• State sponsors of nuclear terrorism. Nuclear-weapon states, even ‘rogues’, are most unlikely to be foolish enough to hand nuclear weapons, which are among their dearest national treasures, over to such unreliable, unpredictable and potentially dangerous characters as terrorists, especially when the chances of a suspected state sponsor suffering nuclear retaliation and annihilation are so good and so blindingly obvious.
• Psychotic terrorist killers. The overwhelming majority of terrorists are as psychologically healthy, rational and intelligent as the rest of us; indeed, mentally ill terrorists would be far less dangerous and much easier to deal with. Terrorists are typically neither psychopathic nor psychotic, nor are they driven by mere bloodlust. Furthermore, terrorists have not historically been particularly interested in WMD, and no terrorist use of WMD of any kind has resulted in mass casualties, unless the airliners used in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 (‘9/11’) count as weapons of mass destruction. States, on the other hand, have used WMD to great effect. This is not to say that terrorists are not interested in killing large numbers of people; clearly, some are. Much of the concern about nuclear terrorism derives from the reasonable fear that al-Qaeda might be planning an attack even more lethal than those of /11. However, neither al-Qaeda nor any of the organizations linked to it has ever used WMD, and the evidence that they have the will or technical capacity to do so is limited and unconvincing.
• An existential threat. When applied to nuclear terrorism, the phrase ‘existential threat’ implies that a state such as the United States could be destroyed by terrorists wielding nuclear weapons. Yet to destroy the United States or any other large industrial state, in the sense of inflicting such damage to its government, economy, population and infrastructure that it could no longer function as a coherent political and economic entity, would require a large number of well-placed nuclear weapons with yields in the tens or hundreds of kilotons. It is unlikely that terrorists could successfully obtain, emplace and detonate a single nuclear weapon, while no plausible radiological device or devices could do any significant damage on a national level.
These arguments do not mean that the possibility of true nuclear terrorism can be ignored. Even a miniscule risk is too high, given the nature of the threat. But fear of that most terrifying image, a terrorist with an atom bomb, should not blind us to the need to prevent and defend against the much more probable forms of nuclear terrorism: attacks on nuclear reactors or other elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, and RDDs powered by industrial or medical radiation sources. By the same token, for all the focus on jihadist Islamic terrorism, other groups might, under certain circumstances, be more dangerous.