Make Your Own Bomb

["Estabrooks, Bates (IHK) " <IHK@Y12.doe.gov>]

How (not) To Build A Dirty Bomb	

	

The Age Jon Ronson 08/18/2002

Building your own atomic weapon is easy, they say. Is it? Jon Ronson takes a

crash course.

It is Monday and I have been commanded by The Guardian to attempt to

purchase the materials needed to build a nuclear bomb. The rumour is that

anyone with a fanatical resolve can build one in their "garage or

basement''. Is this true?

Actually, I can report that it is not proving to be chillingly easy. Good

news for humanity, but bad news for me personally as I was hoping this

article would provide a shocking insight. The Bulletin of the Atomic

Scientists writes: ``Producing either uranium-235 or plutonium-239 in the

quantities needed to make nuclear weapons is extraordinarily difficult and

expensive. (Nuclear bomb makers) must be prepared to spend hundreds of

millions of dollars, or even billions.''

I consequently downgrade my ambition to building a dirty bomb - a

conventional bomb mixed with radioactive material - instead. I am a novice

in this matter. Not only is my knowledge of the necessary physics sketchy at

best, but my resources are extremely limited. The Guardian has told me not

to go crazy with the expenses. I don't even have a garage or a basement. Nor

do I have good contacts with the keepers of already established nuclear

arsenals. My position is presumably akin to that of a fledgling,

eager-to-impress al Qaeda operative. True, I do not possess a fanatical

resolve, but my determination to make this article a dramatic revelation is

fanaticism of a sort.

When I call Matthew Bunn, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative think tank in

Washington, he says he is a little worried about this idea.

"One does not want to provide a cookbook for terrorists,'' he says.

Nonetheless, he recommends that I try Russia.

"If I was building a dirty bomb,'' he says, ``that's what I would do. In the

nuclear age, they were building nuclear airplanes and nuclear rocket-ships.

They were digging canals using nuclear bombs. There was a great deal of

nuclear enthusiasm, and now loads of these big, hulking, nasty radioactive

sources are scattered around all over. Those are the absolute worst. And

loads are still missing in breakaway republics.''

He tells me about the Georgian woodcutters who were scouting around the

forests of Lja last Christmas. ``They saw this thing - the snow was melted

all around it - and thought, hey, we'll take it back to our camp site and

keep ourselves warm. Whoops.'' The thing was a thermonuclear generator. The

woodcutters were in intensive care for months.

"A lot of the smugglers in Russia,'' he adds, ``are guys who don't know shit

from Shinola. We're talking about some guy who works in a power plant hiding

some stuff in his pocket and wandering around aimlessly, chatting people up.

One guy had an insulated glove filled with uranium in his freezer for

months.''

I call Imogen Edwards-Jones, author of the chick-lit novel about the London

party circuit, My Canape Hell. Unlike many chick-lit novelists, she is also

a long-standing chronicler of the Russian mafia. I ask her to put me in

touch with a uranium smuggler. She seems a little reluctant. "The uranium

guys are frightening,'' she says, but eventually agrees to try.

A few days later she calls me back. "Well, I spoke to my mafia contacts,''

she says.

"And?'' I ask.

"They laughed,'' she says. ``They laughed and said, `Oh shut up'.'' She

pauses. "The uranium people are the absolute top level of criminality. One

guy I know ended up being skinned alive in the back of his car. Another . .

. was beheaded in his office.''

"OK,'' I say.

"Another guy's girlfriend was found chopped up in Sainsbury bags in

Greece,'' she adds. "They keep going after you.''

She tells me that if I persevere, I should watch out for men wearing good

suits.

"The smarter someone's suit, the dirtier their soul,'' she says.

I resign myself to the task of heading to Chechnya to scout around the

forests and make contact with frightening men. Then it dawns on me - I

really don't need to go to all that trouble. A dirty-bomb maker who wants an

easy life could get radioactive material in a far simpler way.

A few years ago, a nuclear burial ground was raided by Chechen militants.

Nobody knows how much was stolen because the Russian authorities can't find

anyone willing to dig the rest of it up to see what was missing. When

castigated for their ham-fistedness, the authorities responded by saying

that the West should not feel too superior because, since 1996, United

States businesses have misplaced some 1500 pieces of equipment that include

radioactive parts.

I call the National Nuclear Security Administration in Las Vegas, which is

in charge of getting them back. Its surveillance teams are apparently

patrolling cities with unmarked vans containing gamma-ray and neutron

detectors on a daily basis.

"We have the wherewithal to search for these things,'' says Darwin Morgan,

its public affairs spokesman, ``and if we find them, we also have the

resources to render them safe. We're a team made up of scientists. Eggheads,

if you will.''

"What kind of stuff has gone missing?'' I ask.

"Density gauges,'' he says. ``Local departments of transportation have a

commonly used piece of equipment called a density gauge. It's used to test

the compaction of recently compacted roads. It contains nuclear material.''

"Do lots of density gauges go missing?'' I ask.

"Quite a few,'' says Darwin. ``There was one in Florida recently. They

called on us.''

"Did you find it?'' I ask.

"No,'' says Darwin.

"How many density gauges would one need to make a dirty bomb?'' I ask.

"I don't know,'' he says. ``You'd have to ask someone who knows how to make

bombs.''

"Like who?'' I ask.

"Well,'' he sniffs. ``There are some think tanks in Washington who claim to

have knowledge of such things.'' I've never heard the phrase ``think tanks''

uttered with such disdain. I call Matthew Bunn back. ``Is one density gauge

enough to make a dirty bomb?'' I ask him.

"It depends on your goal,'' he says. ``Do you want to scare a lot of

people?''

"I haven't really thought about it,'' I say. ``OK. Yes.'' I think both of us

are uncomfortable about me adopting the terrorist persona.

``At what level do you want to scare them?'' he says.

``A lot,'' I say.

``Well,'' he says, ``at any detectable level of radioactivity, people would

get scared. So milligrams of the stuff would be sufficient. Just put it in a

box with some Semtex and boom. Billions on clean-up, but hardly anybody

dead, and life goes on. In a realistic dirty-bomb scenario, you'll have more

people killed in traffic accidents fleeing from the scene than dying of

cancer. You and I have a 20 per cent chance of dying of cancer - although I

can hear you smoking a cigarette, so your chances are substantially higher.

With a dirty bomb, the chances rise to approximately 21 per cent.''

``And a density gauge?'' I ask.

``That would be enough to cause moderate annoyance. You'd have many city

blocks evacuated.'' I decide to try and buy some radioactive material on the

Internet. I learn of two auction houses based in New York: Uranium-Online

and NukeAuction.com. Both are managed by something called the New York

Nuclear Corporation (NYNC). It specialises, somewhat unnervingly, in

real-time nuclear material online auctions. I get the corporation's number

from directory enquiries.

I expect to be transferred from department to department within some giant

conglomerate, but when I call, it sounds as if the NYNC is actually a couple

of men sitting in a room. The chief executive officer picks up the telephone

himself.

He says his name is Joe. ``We're just a few people,'' confirms Joe. ``My

partner is an attorney. I'm a nuclear engineer. We saw that other

commodities were being auctioned online and we figured we could try the same

thing with nuclear fuel.''

I offer Joe the scenario: I am a fanatic with a nefarious intent. Sternly I

explain that it is important for him to answer my questions candidly because

my readers are concerned. He agrees.

``Can I, a fanatic, bid for uranium in one of your auctions?'' I ask him.

``The auction is passworded and by invitation only,'' he replies. ``I guess

your scenario is theoretically possible if you managed to get yourself a

password. But the buyers and sellers all know each other, it's a very

private industry, and when the winner is selected, they talk to each other.

They deal directly. So you could ruin the auction, but you could never take

possession of the uranium.''

I log on to Ask Jeeves and type, ``Where can I buy some uranium?''. Jeeves

responds: ``You can find anything at eBay. eBay has everything you're

looking for. Find it all at eBay''. So I type uranium into the eBay search

box, and discover that there will be a uranium auction in exactly two hours

and 46 minutes. The description of the item being auctioned reads: ``This is

uranium-238. The vile (sic) and the uranium weighs 22 grams.''There have

already been three bidders, the top bid being $18.41. I call Matthew Bunn

and ask him if 22 grams of uranium-238 would suffice for a dirty bomb.

``Not very interesting,'' he says. ``It's used for ballast in ships. The US

has thousands of tonnes of it that it is desperate to get rid of. I haven't

even thought about uranium-238. If I was building a dirty bomb, you know

what I'd get my hands on?''

``What?'' I ask.

``One of those machines they use to kill bacteria in meat in a

food-processing plant. It contains cobalt-60. If you burst one successfully,

blam! That would be a really big disaster. Although they emit shards as

opposed to inhalable particles. But there are clever things you can do to

turn shards into inhalable particles.''

I call the McDonald's corporation. ``I'm from The Guardian,'' I say, ``and

we're doing a special issue commemorating the horrific destruction in

Hiroshima, so I'm calling McDonald's because . . .''

``Hmm?'' says the press officer, a little defensively. She is clearly

wondering in what way The Guardian is about to blame McDonald's for

Hiroshima. I ask her if any of their meat-processing plants use cobalt-60

and she says she will get back to me.

She does, with unmistakable joy and relief in her voice. ``McDonald's does

not use irradiated meat. And anyway, it's illegal in this country.''

The Food Commission confirms this, although - it says - there is one plant

in England that uses cobalt-60 to irradiate herbs and spices. The US,

however, routinely zaps red meat with cobalt-60. America alone has 40 food

sterilisation centres, and there are 120 more worldwide. Thousands of

cobalt-60 rods are used. The Organic Consumers Association reports that

food-irradiation plants are ``poorly guarded'', but Neil Sheehan of the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission contends that ``an individual physically

handling an unshielded single-source rod would receive a lethal (death

within weeks) dose in about a minute''. I have now upgraded myself to a

suicide dirty-bomb maker, so that's no longer an issue.

I call Matthew Bunn.

"OK,'' I say. ``Let's say I've got some cobalt-60. How do I cleverly turn

the shards into inhalable particles?''

There is a short silence.

"I'm not going to tell you,'' he says.

Is this reticence due to his earlier warning that I ought not provide a

``cookbook for terrorists'', or is it something more embarrassing?

Has it just crossed his mind that I am an actual terrorist pretending to be

a Guardian journalist?

Maybe, in the end, the best way for a terrorist to make a dirty bomb is to

pretend to be a Guardian journalist and phone a bunch of scientists and

academics for excellent insider tips. 

Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd	



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