IAEA chief sounds warning on 'nuclear terrorism'

The head of the UN atomic agency warned today against complacency in preventing "nuclear terrorism", saying progress in recent years should not lull the world into a false sense of security.
"Much has been achieved in the past decade," Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency told a gathering in Vienna of some 1,200 delegates from around 110 states including 35 ministers to review progress on the issue.
"Many countries have taken effective measures to prevent theft, sabotage, unauthorised access, illegal transfer, or other malicious acts involving nuclear or other radioactive material. Security has been improved at many facilities containing such material."

Partly as a result, he said, "there has not been a terrorist attack involving nuclear or other radioactive material."
"But this must not lull us into a false sense of security. If a 'dirty bomb' is detonated in a major city, or sabotage occurs at a nuclear facility, the consequences could be devastating.
"Nuclear terrorism" comprises three main risks: an atomic bomb, a "dirty bomb" -- conventional explosion spreading radioactive material -- and an attack on a nuclear plant.

The first, using weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, is generally seen as "low probability, high consequence" -- very difficult to pull off but for a determined group of extremists, not impossible.

There are hundreds of tonnes of weapons-usable plutonium and uranium -- a grapefruit-sized amount is enough for a crude nuclear weapon that would fit in a van -- around the world.
A "dirty bomb" -- a "radiological dispersal device" or RDD -- is much easier but would be hugely less lethal. But it might still cause mass panic.
"If the Boston marathon bombing (in April this year) had been an RDD, the trauma would be lasting a whole lot longer," Sharon Squassoni from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told AFP.