Word: plutonium
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...mere fact that plutonium is on the market could conceivably lend credibility to terrorist groups that might try to persuade people they have built a bomb. "The problem now," says Richard Guthrie of the Verification Technology Information Center, a nonprofit group in London, "is blackmail. If someone says he's built a bomb in a basement somewhere, how does a government react when that person produces a gram or so of weapons-grade material to prove the threat...
While the ultimate terror would be a working bomb constructed by terrorists on their own, the much likelier catastrophe is a large purchase of plutonium by a country looking for a shortcut to a nuclear arsenal. "It's clear that the highest bidder is going to be a state," says Phebe Marr, an expert on Iraq at the National Defense University in Washington. A government with nuclear ambitions would want not just a single bomb but an arsenal or significant additions to an existing arsenal. One or two bombs could attract threats and retaliation from abroad. So an interested state...
...wants to be the most powerful military presence in the gulf," says Mourad El-Desouky, a military expert at Al Ahram Strategic Studies Center in Cairo. "It wants nuclear weapons for deterrence and to intimidate its neighbors." He believes that the Iranians have the money to go shopping for plutonium and weapons-grade uranium from Russia's black market in Western Europe, and "it is realistic to think they are doing that...
Plugging the Plutonium Leak...
...third time since May, German authorities seized plutonium that appears to have been smuggled out of the former Soviet Union. But a Russian official defended his country's nuclear security, saying it was no better or worse than that of any other nuclear power. "A smart man can cheat any system," said Yuri Rogozhin, spokesman for Russia's nuclear regulatory agency...