Word: uranium
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...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...
...uranium in the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima came from the Congo. So does the cobalt, essential in the construction of advanced fighter aircraft, as well as diamonds, gold and some of the purest copper on the planet. Even the coltan computer chips in the latest Sony Play Station are made from columbite-tantalite, a mineral mined in the Congo...
...Administration's proposal to reexamine nuclear recycling makes watchdogs even more nervous. Such reprocessing aims to reduce waste by separating plutonium from spent uranium fuel and reusing it as a power source. But this practice hasn't been done in the U.S. since the 1970s, and opponents say it could help put bomb-grade plutonium in the wrong hands...
...United Nations Environment Program issued its final report on the impact of depleted uranium used during the 1999 Kosovo conflict. unep said an analysis of 11 sites across the province showed that contamination levels were low, but the threat of radiation in the water supply remained. The study rated the danger to passers-by as "insignificant," but did not include cases in which people, including soldiers, had direct contact with D.U. particles...