Prospects of Nuclear Terrorism: A Technical Assessment

The threat of nuclear terrorism has attracted greater attention and generated renewed debate in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The subject largely revolves around the hypothetical assumption of some terrorist group acquiring the means to carry out a nuclear detonation in a densely populated city in the West, resulting in mass casualties. These scenarios primarily centre on the notion of terrorist groups being able to either acquire nuclear materials or a nuclear explosive device, or carrying out a radiological attack in a city, or attacking a nuclear facility itself. However, such alarmists largely ignore the technical challenges faced by any potential terrorist in acquiring or developing a working nuclear device and tend to confuse radiological terrorism with nuclear terrorism. An analysis of the various circumstances depicting the prospects of nuclear terrorism reveals that it is only possible with the dedicated support of a nuclear capable state that has mastered the nuclear fuel cycle and has the ability to produce fissile material and design and develop nuclear weapons. Therefore, such fears are fundamentally based on debates and publications that appear to be oblivions of what it takes to acquire nuclear capability and how nuclear weapons work and are therefore closer to imaginative presumptions rather than reality.