The terrorist secret no one likes to talk about...

[Hayabusa Rider]

That is the former USSR. As someone pointed out (you know who you are) arrests have been made in former USSR countries with materials that could be used for the construction of a "dirty bomb". These arrests in no way guarantee that materials, including fissionable ones, are not making it out. Further, the nuclear scientists and engineers there are cash strapped and could be consulting other countries on their programs. Further, it would be entirely possible for Bin Laden, who almost certainly has some financial resource to buy intact nuclear weapons, given time.


What can and should be done about this?

 

[Alistar7]

As i also pointed out in that thread the US has worked with the Soviets since the fall of the USSR to help keep those materials safe.

It does not help that at times in the past they have not even been able to pay their military, some of whom have resorted to selling basically anything on the base to feed their families.

I agree BL has great access in Russia, they have been assisting the rebels in Chechnya for quite some time...

Please do read the whole article--there are some very frightening, but plausible arguments contained therein that Al Queda very possibly has smuggled radioactive materials out of Russia for a "dirty bomb", coming to a Broadway show near you and me soon?

Americans have not yet taken much note of political violence in Russia ? or of the dirty wars waged, for more than a decade, in restive former Soviet republics with unpronounceable names. But the taking of 600 hostages by Chechen terrorists at a Moscow theater should command our attention, because it may well hold clues to jihadists' future attacks in the United States.
[...]
The bin-Laden-Khattab-Basayev nexus ? the Chechnyan connection ? is a scarlet thread in the otherwise murky world of global jihad. Consider:

The 9/11 hijackers from Mohammad Atta's Hamburg cell initially joined al Qaeda to fight in Chechnya. According to German court testimony this week by Mounir Motassadeq, a Moroccan who was apparently Atta's moneyman, Atta came to the attention of al Qaeda's inner leadership while training for the Chechnyan jihad.

Though Atta and his crew were chosen by al Qaeda for a "holier" mission, bin Laden has sent many brigades of non-native Muslims to fight in Chechnya. At the start of this year Russian security officials estimated that over 300 foreign jihadists were with the Chechens. U.S. intelligence calculates that a hardened al Qaeda cell of perhaps 100 militants is holding together an otherwise rag-tag band of Chechens in their lawless Georgian sanctuary, the Pankisi Gorge.

On bin Laden's last videotape before the 9/11 attacks, circulated during the summer of 2001, he and his advisers made impassioned speeches about Muslims being attacked in Chechnya.

In August 2001, the FBI received information from French intelligence that Zacharias Moussaoui had recruited European Muslims to fight with the Chechens

 

[Alistar7]

Should we buy the French and German intel?

and you know I would love to talk about it, that's why I posted that thread, it highlights the very real threat of rogue nations that have WMD and the danger from terrorists who are welcome there, as in Iraq.

I see you can argue both sides effectively as well......

 

[phillyTIM]

After the Bush Regime leaves, good relations will be restored between the US and Germany/France.

All our people on both sides are just waiting it out now.

 

[Alistar7]

There are good relations, the German PM apologized for using Iraq as a politcal tool in his re-elction bid and Chirac called kissing Bush's a*s right after Baghdad fell...

Notice we are unified in our approach to NK, Iran, and the Israel/Palestine situations...

 

[AnImuS]

Originally posted by: phillyTIM
After the Bush Regime leaves, good relations will be restored between the US and Germany/France.

All our people on both sides are just waiting it out now.

Bush regime for the hilary regime?

No thanks

"All our people on both sides are just waiting it out now"

Im not

 

[rahvin]

Somthing to keep in mind is just how heavily nuclear material is watched. Even in the former USSR the fissionable material itself is STRICTLY controlled and regulated. Although non-fissionalbe material and all the conventional weapons may be flowing freely the stuff to make a nuke is very very strictly controlled. There have been more than half a dozen indidents where real fissionable material actually was attempted to be sold and moved. All were blocked. The only discrepency is that 10kg of plutonium is unaccounted for from the former soviet stockpiles. It's been gone for about 8 years so it likely ended up with a nation-state. Intelligence sources suspect Iran bought it. BL couldn't come close to aquiring the funds necessary to aquire fissionable material. The stuff is likely 100's of millions of dollars a kg and you need at least 10kg of plutonium and 60kg of Uranium (unless you have very advanced nuclear technology) to make a bomb.

 

[Tom]

"What can and should be done about this? "

We had a program to buy the material and help employe the scientists. I do not know the current status of the program to make a comment with certainty, but I have the general impression we are not doing as much in this regard as we should.

Anyone know the state of this program ?

 

[HappyGamer2]

bin laden and the boys have been playing with russia for years, they are not freinds. it's hard to say how many bombs they set off in russia directly or indirectly.
but true money talks

 

[maXroOt]

Originally posted by: rahvin
Somthing to keep in mind is just how heavily nuclear material is watched. Even in the former USSR the fissionable material itself is STRICTLY controlled and regulated. Although non-fissionalbe material and all the conventional weapons may be flowing freely the stuff to make a nuke is very very strictly controlled. There have been more than half a dozen indidents where real fissionable material actually was attempted to be sold and moved. All were blocked. The only discrepency is that 10kg of plutonium is unaccounted for from the former soviet stockpiles. It's been gone for about 8 years so it likely ended up with a nation-state. Intelligence sources suspect Iran bought it. BL couldn't come close to aquiring the funds necessary to aquire fissionable material. The stuff is likely 100's of millions of dollars a kg and you need at least 10kg of plutonium and 60kg of Uranium (unless you have very advanced nuclear technology) to make a bomb.

not really, russia has admitted that they dont even know how many nukes they have !!

also, we dont give that many funds to russia to protect there nukes. we cut funding for the Nunn Lugar program and the CRT program. and, if bush wanted to sign the moscow treaty (aka SORT treaty) but russia doesnt want to now because they are all pissed at us. but this is a good thing!!! it wouldve been horrible if we signed the SORT treaty! it has the countries simply put many of there missiles in storage, not destroy them! and putting them in storage leads to a much greater chance of being stolen, since russia's storage capabilities are already stretched thin.

and the scientist thing someone was talking about above is commonly referred to as "brain drain"

 

[rahvin]

Originally posted by: maXroOt

Originally posted by: rahvin
Somthing to keep in mind is just how heavily nuclear material is watched. Even in the former USSR the fissionable material itself is STRICTLY controlled and regulated. Although non-fissionalbe material and all the conventional weapons may be flowing freely the stuff to make a nuke is very very strictly controlled. There have been more than half a dozen indidents where real fissionable material actually was attempted to be sold and moved. All were blocked. The only discrepency is that 10kg of plutonium is unaccounted for from the former soviet stockpiles. It's been gone for about 8 years so it likely ended up with a nation-state. Intelligence sources suspect Iran bought it. BL couldn't come close to aquiring the funds necessary to aquire fissionable material. The stuff is likely 100's of millions of dollars a kg and you need at least 10kg of plutonium and 60kg of Uranium (unless you have very advanced nuclear technology) to make a bomb.

not really, russia has admitted that they dont even know how many nukes they have !!

also, we dont give that many funds to russia to protect there nukes. we cut funding for the Nunn Lugar program and the CRT program. and, if bush wanted to sign the moscow treaty (aka SORT treaty) but russia doesnt want to now because they are all pissed at us. but this is a good thing!!! it wouldve been horrible if we signed the SORT treaty! it has the countries simply put many of there missiles in storage, not destroy them! and putting them in storage leads to a much greater chance of being stolen, since russia's storage capabilities are already stretched thin.

and the scientist thing someone was talking about above is commonly referred to as "brain drain"

Don't believe the media hype. Russia and the Americans both know exactly how many nuclear weapons each has. Both countries monitor each others stockpiles under treaty. In addition american and other western powers are consistenly trying buy nuclear material on the open market.

Also let me clue you in about something else, you can't destroy nuclear material without putting it in a conventional reactor or setting off the weapon. In all cases of nuclear weapons they are simply dismantled the material stored. There is no magic wand that you can wave and have plutonium cease to exist.

 

[Alistar7]

why not, saddam did it with all of his wmd...

 

[maXroOt]

Originally posted by: rahvin

Originally posted by: maXroOt

Originally posted by: rahvin
Somthing to keep in mind is just how heavily nuclear material is watched. Even in the former USSR the fissionable material itself is STRICTLY controlled and regulated. Although non-fissionalbe material and all the conventional weapons may be flowing freely the stuff to make a nuke is very very strictly controlled. There have been more than half a dozen indidents where real fissionable material actually was attempted to be sold and moved. All were blocked. The only discrepency is that 10kg of plutonium is unaccounted for from the former soviet stockpiles. It's been gone for about 8 years so it likely ended up with a nation-state. Intelligence sources suspect Iran bought it. BL couldn't come close to aquiring the funds necessary to aquire fissionable material. The stuff is likely 100's of millions of dollars a kg and you need at least 10kg of plutonium and 60kg of Uranium (unless you have very advanced nuclear technology) to make a bomb.

not really, russia has admitted that they dont even know how many nukes they have !!

also, we dont give that many funds to russia to protect there nukes. we cut funding for the Nunn Lugar program and the CRT program. and, if bush wanted to sign the moscow treaty (aka SORT treaty) but russia doesnt want to now because they are all pissed at us. but this is a good thing!!! it wouldve been horrible if we signed the SORT treaty! it has the countries simply put many of there missiles in storage, not destroy them! and putting them in storage leads to a much greater chance of being stolen, since russia's storage capabilities are already stretched thin.

and the scientist thing someone was talking about above is commonly referred to as "brain drain"

Don't believe the media hype. Russia and the Americans both know exactly how many nuclear weapons each has. Both countries monitor each others stockpiles under treaty. In addition american and other western powers are consistenly trying buy nuclear material on the open market.

Also let me clue you in about something else, you can't destroy nuclear material without putting it in a conventional reactor or setting off the weapon. In all cases of nuclear weapons they are simply dismantled the material stored. There is no magic wand that you can wave and have plutonium cease to exist.

thats not the media hype. i am on the debate team, and ive been debating this for a few years. one of my judges one round was on the joint cheif of staffs at some point, he confirmed what we said was true (to his knowledge). i have read many books, articles, and law reviews all supporting what i said. from american sources, russian sources, european sources etc. russia does NOT know exactly how many strategic nuclear weapons they have. yes we try to buy all ther nuclear material on the open market, but its not how tom clancy writes ....

yes u can essentially destroy them ... u put the plutonium/uranium into this chemical mixture and basically make radioactive sludge. the stuff is no longer weapons grade material, so it cant be used. yes it still techinically exists, but in such a way that it cant be used in a nuclear weapon. de-alerting would be much better though ...

 

[dahunan]

Ted Turner is using his money to try to make a difference
http://www.nti.org/

U.S. Can't Ignore Nuclear Threat
By Ted Turner
Op/Ed - USA TODAY, Thu May 16, 6:06 AM ET

I'm worried that we're about to make the same mistake we made a decade ago.

In August of 1991, when a coup by Soviet hard-liners fell apart, then-president Mikhail Gorbachev gave credit to live global television for keeping world attention on the action, and Time magazine wrote: ''Momentous things happened precisely because they were being seen as they happened.''

But if good things can happen because a lot of people are watching, bad things can happen when few people are watching. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the media moved off the story of the nuclear threat -- and we moved into the new world order without undoing the danger of the old world order.

In the wake of Sept. 11, people are realizing that the nuclear threat didn't end with the Cold War. Soviet weapons, materials and know-how are still there, more dangerous than ever. Russia's economic troubles weakened controls on them, and global terrorists are trying harder to get them.

When President Bush (news - web sites) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) meet in Moscow next week, they will sign a treaty to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on each side. They need to reduce a lot more than that. Some of the poisonous byproducts of the two powers' arms race are piled high in poorly guarded facilities across 11 time zones. They offer mad fools the power to kill millions.

At a Bush-Putin news conference two months after the terrorist attacks, Bush declared: ''Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.'' He also has told his national security staff to give nuclear terrorism top priority.

Where's the money?

But it's hard to see this priority in the budget and policies of the administration. Not a dollar of the $38 billion the administration requested in new spending for homeland defense will address loose weapons, materials and know-how in Russia. The total spending on these programs -- even after Sept. 11 -- has remained flat at about a billion dollars a year, even though, at this rate, we will still not have secured all loose nuclear materials in Russia for years to come.

But what worries me most is not the lack of new spending, but the lack of new thinking. Where are the new ideas for preventing nuclear terrorism?

We can't just keep doing what we've been doing, and we can't just copy old plans; we've got to innovate. If we are hit with one of these weapons because we slept through this wake-up call from hell, it will be the most shameful failure of national defense in the history of the United States.

Waning public interest

Unfortunately, public pressure for action is weak, partly because media attention on nuclear terrorism has begun to fade. And it's fading not because the threat has been addressed or reduced, but because the media cover what changes, and threats don't change much day to day. They just keep on ticking.

The media need to stay on this story because it's harder to get government action when there's not much media coverage. If something's not in the media, it's not in the public mind. If it's not in the public mind, there's little political pressure to act. If public attention moves off this nuclear threat before the government has moved to reduce it, we will be making the same mistake we made after 1991.

Leadership, however, means being out in front even if no one's pushing from behind. Bush and Putin need to think bigger and do more. They need to reduce the chance that terrorists can steal nuclear weapons or materials or hire away weapons scientists. They need to work together as partners in fighting terror and encourage others to join. They need to launch a worldwide plan to identify weapons, materials and know-how and secure all of it, everywhere, now -- if we are to avoid Armageddon.


CNN founder Ted Turner last year established the Nuclear Threat Initiative, dedicated to reducing the threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He has pledged to provide $250 million to fund its activities.

http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.05/0516turnerus.htm May - 2002

 

[amok]

u put the plutonium/uranium into this chemical mixture and basically make radioactive sludge. the stuff is no longer weapons grade material, so it cant be used. yes it still techinically exists, but in such a way that it cant be used in a nuclear weapon

Not exactly true . You can make a 'radioactive sludge' out of weapons grade material so that it can't be used as is. However, that sludge can be 'chemically treated' as well, and you can end up with materials that require far less refinement than starting from scratch. There are difficulties with doing this, but its far from impossible.

As for not knowing how many strategic nukes it has, that's BS. They know exactly how many operational warheads they have. What they aren't sure of is how much fissionable material they have. That's unsettling in and of itself, but its not as bad as it sounds. LANL scientists and russian reps have been going around gathering up the 'unreported' inventories from the old production managers for quite a while now, and most of those materials have now been accounted for.

 

[maXroOt]

Originally posted by: amok

u put the plutonium/uranium into this chemical mixture and basically make radioactive sludge. the stuff is no longer weapons grade material, so it cant be used. yes it still techinically exists, but in such a way that it cant be used in a nuclear weapon

Not exactly true . You can make a 'radioactive sludge' out of weapons grade material so that it can't be used as is. However, that sludge can be 'chemically treated' as well, and you can end up with materials that require far less refinement than starting from scratch. There are difficulties with doing this, but its far from impossible.

As for not knowing how many strategic nukes it has, that's BS. They know exactly how many operational warheads they have. What they aren't sure of is how much fissionable material they have. That's unsettling in and of itself, but its not as bad as it sounds. LANL scientists and russian reps have been going around gathering up the 'unreported' inventories from the old production managers for quite a while now, and most of those materials have now been accounted for.

i am not sure if ths is possible, but it would still be MUCH better then just storing it in some silo or something

gonna have to disagree again, russia does not know exactly how many nuclear warheads they possess. and it hasnt helped that we slashed funding for Nunn lugar program

 

[Zebo]

It's not a matter of if it's a matter of when. The auorities frequently bust 2kg here 4 kg there. 90% of crimes go unoticed.

Make your time.

 

[amok]

I wasn't saying that its a worse option. Definitely better than those silos you mentioned. And as I said, it isn't an easy process. It would take a knowledgable scientist and some good engineers to pull off (as well as some fairly serious cash). I was just pointing out that rahvin was correct in saying there isn't a magic wand for disposing of nuclear materials.

As for the other part, we will simply have to agree to disagree .