Nuclear terrorism risk seen growing*

By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
Reuters
Wednesday, February 7, 2007; 7:17 PM

LONDON (Reuters) - Western governments must take seriously the
possibility of terrorists exploding a nuclear bomb as the necessary
materials and know-how become easier to acquire, security analysts argue
in two new reports.

"The threat of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons is real ...
moreover, the likelihood of terrorists acquiring such weapons is growing
as more states aggressively pursue their own nuclear ambitions," the
EastWest Institute said in a study.

It said the first nuclear terrorist may turn out to be an American or
European, reflecting a likely evolution in security threats over the
next 10-15 years and a possible shift away from al Qaeda-style Islamist
militancy toward eco-terrorism.

In a separate report, London's influential Chatham House think-tank said
it was feasible that terrorists could acquire an atomic bomb, build one
themselves, create an "improvised nuclear device" or blow up a nuclear
power station.

Another risk was the collapse of government control over civil and
military nuclear facilities and materials in countries like Pakistan or
North Korea.

The design, materials and engineering for a bomb "have all become
commodities, more or less available to those determined enough to
acquire them," said Paul Cornish, head of the international security
program at Chatham House.

He said the science and engineering challenges were very difficult but
not insurmountable.

IMPROVISED BOMB

Rather than aiming to build a military-grade atomic weapon, terrorists
might settle for a cruder improvised device that would require more
uranium but a lesser degree of enrichment, thereby reducing one of the
key technical barriers.

"The device might then 'fizzle' rather than detonate its entire mass
instantly and efficiently. But if the resulting explosion were to be
equivalent to just one or a few kilotons of TNT rather than tens of
kilotons, terrorists could still find this option attractive," Cornish
wrote.

He stressed that such a scenario was just one of a range of chemical,
biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats which were all
appealing options for terrorist groups.

Security analysts see a CBRN attack as a logical escalation for groups
such as al Qaeda, which in the past has frequently varied its strikes
and sought to increase their scale -- notably with the September 11,
2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency
MI5, said in November that future threats "may include the use of
chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even
nuclear technology."

Ken Berry, author of the EastWest Institute report, said the rise of
environmental militants would bring "an even bigger prospect that
scientific personnel from the richest countries will aid eco-terrorist
use of nuclear weapons or materials."

Some security analysts believe the effects of global warming will
exacerbate the world's rich-poor divide, intensify conflicts over land,
water and other resources and help to radicalize populations and fan
terrorism.

The study highlighted the recent poisoning of former Russian agent
Alexander Litvinenko in London, apparently with radioactive polonium
smuggled in from Russia, as proof that the international community lacks
proper controls on nuclear materials that could be used by terrorists.

Greg Austin, a Brussels-based analyst for the institute, said the
episode showed that secular Europeans were not averse to using nuclear
substances as weapons. "We need to deal with the prospect that the first
nuclear terrorist is in fact more likely to be American or European," he
said.