Re: Nuclear Proliferation - HP related

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 06:52 PM 1/13/99 -0600, you wrote:
>
>We know well from various stories, which come close to science fiction,
>that terrorists can easily (!) steal burnt up nuclear fuel rods from
>transports to burial grounds or reprocessing plants ...

I snipped out the bulk of this message, but I do want to make a point.
While I can't disagree with much of what Franz says here, I have to add one
important fact: every nation that has attempted to build a nuclear weapon
has succeeded on the first try. Which means (at least to me) that under
late 20th century rules, it isn't that hard to do. I believe that terroists
hiding in a desert would be hard pressed to build one, but smaller, less
stable governments could. It seems obvious that terroists could find more
useful instruments of terror (botulism in a drinking water supply is the
most discussed example), but renegade governments (there are a few) are a
potential problem for nuclear weapons.

But I fully agree that this is not an issue for HPs - it's everyone's
problem. And I'm not so sure that inventories of fissionable material are
all that accurate everywhere, and starvation can induce a person to sell
just about anything.

---------
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(650) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu

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