Dirty bombs
http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/terrorism-around-corner.html
Ten years ago today I joined a group of nuclear security and terrorism experts for a meal in Central London, following a day of discussion of terrorist threats on nuclear waste stores.
The reason for the meeting was the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM-1) had convened a group of security specialists to advise CoRWM on security aspects of radioactive waste management and storage facilities.
Less than 10 hours after the dinner, a bomb destroyed a London bus barely two minutes around the corner from the restaurant, one of four bombs to be detonated by suicide bombers that rush hour morning on London Public Transport, killing 52 people, and injuring a further 700.
It was a black coincidence that this meeting of terrorist specialists should have met so close to a terrorist outrage
When the group met for the second time, in London on 13-14 December 2005, the specialists unanimously agreed on a statement, and conveyed to CoRWM their strong belief that the statement should appear at a prominent place in the final documentation of the CoRWM process then under way, which it did. The statement reads:
“The security Specialists appointed to the CoRWM Specialist Security Workshop
recognize that CoRWM is not responsible for the priority that is being given to the
conditioning and mode of storage of nuclear waste forms prior to their transportation to
the selected storage/disposal facility that may not occur for some decades into the future.
However, it is our unanimous opinion that greater attention should be given to the
current management of radioactive waste held in the UK, in the context of its
vulnerability to potential terrorist attacks. We are not aware of any UK Government
programme that is addressing this issue with adequate detail or priority, and consider it
unacceptable for some vulnerable waste forms, such as spent fuel, to remain in their
current condition and mode of storage. We urge the Government to take the required
action and to instruct the NDA, in cooperation with the regulators, to produce an
implementation plan for categorising and reducing the vulnerability of the UK’s
inventory of radioactive waste to potential acts of terrorism, through conditioning and
placement in storage options with an engineered capability specifically designed to
resist a major terrorist attack.”
“This report assumes that a security event is a deliberate, planned attack. The underlying
motives for the attack are not important here, except to the extent that they affect the
probability of the event. It is important, however, to understand the specific objectives
that attackers might hope to achieve by attacking a radioactive-waste facility or transport
operation. These objectives can be categorized within three general purposes: releasing
radioactive material directly; misappropriating radioactive material for subsequent malicious
use; and misappropriating fissile material, also for subsequent malicious use.”
Radioactive Waste Management Limited is currently consulting on its latest stage of planning for nuclear waste burial. It has yet to address the terrorist threat in the decade