[A-List] US imperialism: strategy of tension

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

'Dirty bomb' is West's worst terror nightmare
IAN BRUCE
The Herald, 11 June 2002

A "dirty" bomb made up of high-grade radioactive waste from a power
station packed around plastic explosives from a quarry is the West's
worst terrorist nightmare short of detonation of a custom-built nuclear
warhead in downtown Washington or London.

A successful attack using a radiological weapon could inflict tens of
thousands of civilian casualties, render the heart of a city
uninhabitable for centuries through contamination, and produce birth
defects and cancers for generations after the blast.

The worst-case scenario studied by security services involves a
conventional bomb wrapped in deadly plutonium or caesium-137 going off
in a van parked on the top floor of a high-rise car park somewhere in a
city centre.

If the terrorists judged the attack properly for wind speed and
direction, they could send a plume of lethal radioactive fragments and
contaminated dust and plaster over a cigar-shaped area of a square mile
or so of prime real estate.

And if they detonated the device at lunchtime or during the rush hour,
they could add mass panic and gridlocked streets to the casualty toll
from radiation. Police and medical services would be overwhelmed until
central government or the military could intervene.

The clear-up of streets and buildings coated with isotopes could take
years. It might be cheaper to seal off and abandon the contaminated area
entirely.

Prime targets in the UK would be the concentration of government
buildings and departments in Whitehall, or the commercial heart of the
City of London and the stock exchange. Terrorists are always drawn to
the symbolism of striking high-profile capitalist targets.

Estimating how heavy the blow might be depends on how much and what type
of radiological material is available, how much explosive is used to
disperse it, and whether it rains within hours or days of the explosion.
Rain brings fallout rapidly back to earth, limiting the spread of
contamination.

The location of the Royal Navy's Clyde nuclear submarine base was chosen
partially because of the phenomenon know to sailors as "Faslane
weather." It rains there more than 300 days a year, a natural safety
feature in the event of an accident.

The International Atomic Energy Authority has recorded 175 cases of
illegal trafficking in nuclear material and 201 cases of selling medical
or industrial atomic waste since 1993.

Only 18 known instances have involved amounts of highly-enriched uranium
or plutonium, the basic components of nuclear weapons. But 13 have
happened in the last year, and at least two have involved agents
claiming to represent the al Qaeda network.

The accidental release of a windblown plume of radioactive particles at
Chernobyl in 1986 polluted almost 3000 square miles of the Ukraine and
deposited dangerous levels of contamination across most of northern
Europe.