nuclear-news

There is no reason to believe that an organisation with so hellishly violent a track record as Isil would baulk at using such materials offensively if ever they had ready access to them.

It would, however, be premature to leap from news of (failed) transactions to visions of a nuclear-armed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), without first asking what they could actually do with any nuclear material they bought.

The term ‘nuclear material’ can, in fact, cover a range of different substances, including those required for nuclear explosions – namely, uranium and plutonium. Neither is at all easy to produce………

Alternative uses for nuclear material

A nuclear explosion is not the only use to which Isil could put ‘nuclear materials’.

There are other radioactive substances than uranium and plutonium, and a more practical and perhaps more tempting prospect would for Isil to use these to produce a radiological dispersal device – a so-called ‘dirty bomb’. Such a device would scatter potentially lethal doses of radioactive material over a large area.

The explosive component could be fairly crude, and the appropriate radiological materials would be easier to obtain used (a small quantity of Caesium-137 or Cobalt-60 would be ideal).

No nuclear explosion would result, but there would be a significant risk of radiation sickness and contamination of a wide area. The psychological and environmental impact could be severe.

That said, the lethality of the device itself might not be especially high; much would depend on the context in which the device was used, and the swiftness with which authorities could begin decontamination.

At any rate, most of the value to the terrorists would come from the scale of disruption the bomb caused, rather than from the radiological death toll……..http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11918489/What-could-Isil-actually-do-if-they-got-their-hands-on-nuclear-material.html