High-Impact Terrorism Proceedings of a Russian-American Workshop (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Radiological Terrorism
Radiological Terrorism
Pages 135-148
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From page 137... ...
Current terrorist organizations have a fairly good understanding of a number of characteristic features of our times, among which one might point to the enormous influence of the mass media on the formation of public opinion in general, as well as the problems of "radiophobia" associated with the inadequate education of the public regarding the real consequences of nuclear accidents and incidents in particular. In current practice, the possibility that nuclear, chemical, biological, and other components will be used in applications for terrorist purposes represents a very serious problem.
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From page 138... ...
either a nuclear explosive device stolen from storage arsenals or a home-made nuclear bomb device using highly enriched uranium or plutonium; 2. The theft of radioactive waste materials and similar substances from nuclear facilities such as atomic power stations, research reactors, irradiated fuel processing plants, and storage facilities; and 3.
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From page 139... ...
"Nuclear Mythology of the Late 20th Century," New World, 1995 "Among children in Bryansk Province, there have been 55 cases of thyroid cancer caused by 13lI irradiation. Among Chernobyl emergency clean-up workers, there have been 50 cases of leukemia and 12 cases of thyroid cancer caused by the radiation factor.
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From page 140... ...
Fuel assemblages that have been irradiated in research or power plant reactors could potentially be used to create different types of radiological weapons using various target delivery systems. The potential danger of radioisotopes being extracted from fuel assemblages and then dispersed over a target (the most vulnerable in this sense would be cities with a highly concentrated population)
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From page 141... ...
One could buy 100 to 1000 isotope sources operating on 60Co, 90Sr, or 137Cs in a fairly legal fashion. The potential radiological weapons that could be created from such sources would be comparable to those from the enriched nuclear fuel from the discharge of one atomic power plant.
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From page 142... ...
Despite the law on the use of atomic energy, which requires the licensing of any enterprise using a source of ionizing radiation, a large quantity of powerful radiation sources was also accumulated in medical institutions, industrial enterprises, and quarries during the long years of existence of the old system, which did not require Gosatomnadzor
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From page 143... ...
According to data from the State Hydrographic Enterprise of the Russian Ministry of Transportation, along the Northern Sea corridor there are 381 RTGs in use, located in unpopulated hard-to-reach areas of the Arctic tundra and used as self-contained sources of electricity for naval navigational systems. No measures have been taken for the physical protection of these units, since, when they were installed, no thought was given to the possibility of damage inflicted on them by environmental or TABLE 5 Trends for Radiation Safety Incidents Involving Ionizing Radiation Sources at Russian Enterprises (Not Including Minatom Facilities)
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From page 144... ...
For the following analysis of possible radiological consequences of terrorist acts involving the use of radioisotope sources, we decided to select five radionuclides, including examples of those most commonly used in the economy and those having very high potential danger to human health (Table 6~. Calculations were made with the help of the software packages "TRACE" and "NOSTRADAMUS" developed at the Russian Academy of Sciences Nuclear Safety Institute (Bolshov et al., 1995; Arutyunyan et al., l999b)
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From page 145... ...
The NOSTRADAMUS package was used to consider the radiological consequences of accidents at the Chernobyl Atomic Power Plant and a hypothetical terrorist act involving the detonation of an explosive device with an isotope source in an urban environment. In order to evaluate the scale of the possible consequences of such a terrorist act on the territory of a large city, it was decided to use as a threshold value the magnitude of the radiation dose level received by individual members of the population.
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From page 146... ...
These calculations were made using the imitation Monte Carlo method for an urban area. Preliminary calculations indicated that depending on the orientation of buildings relative to the trajectory of the movement of the emission cloud and on the formation of stagnant zones and tunnel effects, the radionuclide concentration integral in the near-ground air layer in the urban environment can differ from its open-field value by one order of magnitude in either direction.
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From page 147... ...
One cannot rule out the possibility that in order to raise the morale of their fighters they may also find individuals wishing to explode a "radiological bomb" in the name of the struggle against the "infidel" and for the glory of Allah. Let us recall that after a container of 137CS was found in Moscow's Izmailovsky Park in November 1995, there followed a declaration by Dzhokhar Dudayev, who said that "what we have demonstrated in Izmailovsky Park to the entire world community and to Moscow is just a meager portion of the radioactive substances that we possess." It is entirely possible that this was simple bravado; however, we must not forget that one of the largest radioactive waste storage facilities in the region is located in the territory of Chechnya.
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From page 148... ...
314-318. State Committee of the Russian Federation on Environmental Protection.
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