Word: uranium
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...considered to be remote; there is no hard evidence that any terrorist group, including bin Laden's, has a finished nuclear weapon in its arsenal. But not long ago, anthrax seemed a distant threat. And it is possible for the bad guys to assemble an atom bomb with contraband uranium and off-the-shelf parts. "It's not particularly probable, but it's possible,'" says Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The difficulty is that we are dealing with a wide range of low-probability cases. We can't be afraid...
...Muslim neighbor. The military ruler shunned by the West has cast his lot with Washington. After two years of mollycoddling religious extremists, he has vowed to move "swiftly and firmly" if they protest his new policies too violently. Now he must navigate a country with enough enriched uranium for 50 nuclear bombs between the hard demands of Western allies and the howls of rage from anti-American citizens...
...Muslim neighbor. The military ruler shunned by the West has cast his lot with Washington. After two years of mollycoddling religious extremists, he has vowed to move "swiftly and firmly" if they protest his new policies too violently. Now he must navigate a country with enough enriched uranium for 50 nuclear bombs between the hard demands of Western allies and the howls of rage from anti-American citizens...
...that assumes you could manufacture the bomb and put it into position. A terrorist would first have to get hold of some sort of fissionable material--ideally, says Princeton University nuclear proliferation expert Frank von Hippel, enriched uranium. North Korea, Iraq and Libya are believed to have uranium stockpiles but would probably be loath to let them go. A more likely source is the former Soviet Union, where bombmaking supplies are plentiful, the economy is in upheaval, and security has collapsed...
...Laden reportedly tried to obtain uranium from the breakaway Soviet states, but his sources bilked him, offering instead low-grade reactor fuel and radioactive garbage. Even if he had been successful, says von Hippel, it would take at least 150 lbs. of uranium plus hundreds of pounds of casing and machinery to make a weapon. "Nobody's going to be carrying a bomb around in a suitcase," he says...