no material, no bomb
Non-proliferation has officially become my latest political-scientific obsession. What could be a more important issue? Check out “Securing the Bomb” NTI’s latest report on what we’re doing about it, and what we NEED to be doing.
Four kilograms of plutonium – an amount smaller than a soda can – or about three times that amount of highly enriched uranium (HEU) is potentially enough for a nuclear bomb.[4] (See Technical Background.) Unless proper security and accounting systems are in place, a worker at a nuclear facility could put enough material for a bomb in a briefcase or under an overcoat and walk out.
The report also criticizes that we are not moving fast enough to secure nuclear materials.
The amount of potential nuclear weapons material secured in the two years immediately following September 11, 2001, was less than the amount secured in the two years immediately prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to official data described in a new report from Harvard University on steps needed to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists and hostile states. To accelerate the pace, sustained Presidential leadership, particularly in the United States and Russia, is urgently needed to sweep aside disputes over access to sensitive sites and other bureaucratic obstacles to progress, according to the report.
Concerning the sought after stockpiles:
The world’s stockpiles of separated plutonium and HEU are estimated to total some 450 metric tons of military and civilian separated plutonium, and some 1,600 tons of HEU – enough to make nearly a quarter million nuclear weapons.
If terrorists got hold of even a little bit of HEU and made a crappy bomb:
Even a 1-kiloton “fizzle” from a badly executed terrorist bomb would have a diameter of destruction nearly half as big. If parked at the site of the World Trade Center, such a truck-bomb would level every building in the Wall Street financial area and destroy much of lower Manhattan.