Word: metallism
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Plutonium is generally more available than enriched uranium but harder to build a bomb with. Smuggling enough stolen plutonium is reasonably easy: the gray metal commonly comes in 2-lb. bars or gravel-like pellets. While it is highly toxic to breathe in -- one grain can cause lung cancer -- its radioactive alpha rays do not penetrate very far, so thick lead shields are not necessary. But airport metal detectors, which would register any sizable quantity, are to be avoided...
While the U.S. or Russia could make a miniaturized bomb with as little as 6 lbs. of bomb-grade plutonium-239, a beginner could hope to produce only a much larger, cruder device from his 18 lbs. The fissionable metal for a bomb core has to be melted down and fashioned into a virtually perfect sphere about the size of a tennis ball -- called a pit -- a tricky process that takes a well- equipped nuclear laboratory. To make the bomb reach critical mass and set off a chain reaction -- nuclear fission -- you have to make the sphere implode...
...central Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic, two private security guards and a trading-company executive strolled along a quiet street. They were expecting to meet a middle-aged man from St. Petersburg. In exchange for $1 million, they would hand over an 8-in. by 8-in. metal container holding highly radioactive material. But as the traders and their client were about to make their open-air swap in mid-August, 15 police officers rushed out to grab them. The police seized the 130-lb. case emitting gamma radiation. Until a specialized laboratory can examine the material...
Well, it turns out everything didn't go exactly according to plan. Despite the chain-link fence surrounding the 840-acre site, despite the 550 state troopers, the metal detectors, the confiscation of drugs and alcohol and the roaming private security force with the Orwellian name "Peace Patrol," a bit of the anarchy of the original Woodstock crept into its successor 25 years later. Several hundred people crashed the gates. The transportation system broke down early on, stranding huge numbers of fans and making the roads impassable. The audience pitched tents all over the grounds, despite pleas from the stage...
...Frankfurt, Germany, managed to make off with three works by Romantic painters J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich valued at $42 million. Meanwhile, across the ocean at a warehouse on Boston's waterfront, a 1786 portrait of Thomas Jefferson worth at least $1 million was lifted from a metal and concrete safe...