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Delayed Nuclear Reaction

Delayed Nuclear Reaction
Mother Jones 21 July by Bruce falconers

Eight years after 9/11, a global effort to secure nuclear plants from terrorists has only just begun. MoJo interviews the man in charge……………

even as the threat of terrorism has grown, security has remained an ad hoc affair, with each individual facility or country left more or less to its own devices. It was only last September that a Vienna-based nongovernmental organization called the World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS) began bringing nuclear security specialists together to formulate procedures to prevent violent extremists from obtaining the key ingredient in nuclear bombs.  ………..

Roger Howsley: It’s a matter of record that there are terrorist groups that have made plain that if they could access nuclear weapons or nuclear materials and use them for terrorist purposes, they would do so. If you look at some of the court cases related to terrorists, you find that there are people who have actively tried to get hold of nuclear or radioactive materials or have planned to try to get hold them with a view to using them……………………

the thing that governments most worry about is the possibility of someone stealing a nuclear weapon or enough nuclear material to produce an improvised nuclear device, which would be shocking. But we also need to understand that there would be a high level of public paranoia if it were just a small amount of radioactivity that was dispersed. I’ve heard people call dirty bombs “weapons of mass disruption” as opposed to destruction—psychologically, people don’t respond proportionately to the scientifically calculated harm that might be caused from a radioactive release.
Delayed Nuclear Reaction | Mother Jones

July 22, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, safety