Nuclear Terrorism after 9/11 [Paperback]

The very mention of nuclear terrorism is enough to rouse strong reactions, and understandably so, because it combines the most terrifying weapons and the most threatening of people in a single phrase. The possibility that terrorists could obtain and use nuclear weapons deserves careful analysis, but discussion has all too often been contaminated with exaggeration, even hysteria. For example, it has been claimed that nuclear terrorism poses an existential threat to the United States.

This Adelphi Paperdevelops a more measured analysis of the risk of terrorists detonating a true fission device. The problem is attacked from two perspectives: the considerable, possibly insurmountable, technical challenges involved in obtaining a functional nuclear weapon, whether home-made or begged, borrowed or stolen from a state arsenal; and the question of the strategic, political and psychological motivations to go nuclear. The conclusions are that nuclear terrorism is a less significant threat than is commonly believed, and that, among terrorists, Muslim extremists are not the most likely to use nuclear weapons.

1. Introduction  2. Nuclear terrorism  an overview  3. Terrorist Nuclear Weapons  4. The Nuclear Black Market  5. Improvised Nuclear Devices (INDs)  6. Amateur and Low End Weapons Design  7. The Nth Country Experiment  8. The Teenagers 10kt Beachball  9. An Artistic Representation of the Fat Man  10. South Africa: Quick and Dirty Bombs?  11. An Unholy Bomb: the Aum Shinrikyo  12. Loose Russian nuclear weapons  13. Terrorist Psychology, Motivation, and Strategy  14. Psycho Killer, Quest Que Cest?  15. Motivation and Constraints  16. Nationalists/Separatists  17. Social-Revolutionaries  18. Right-Wing Terrorism  19. Religious Terrorism  20.l3&