Zero risk of nuke terror---acquisition is impossible, terrorists can’t make bombs AND no group wants to.

There are three potential routes a terrorist group might take to obtain a nuclear weapon.

One would be for it to be given or sold a bomb by a generous like-minded nuclear state for delivery abroad—the impelling fear about Iraq in 2003. This is highly improbable, however, because there would be too much risk, even for a country led by extremists, that the ultimate source of the weapon would be discovered. As prominent analyst Matthew Bunn puts it, ‘A dictator or oligarch bent on maintaining power is highly unlikely to take the immense risk of transferring such a devastating capability to terrorists they cannot control, given the ever-present possibility that the material would be traced back to its origin’. Important in this last consideration are deterrent safeguards afforded by ‘nuclear forensics’, the rapidly developing science (and art) of connecting nuclear materials to their sources even after a bomb has been exploded.15

Moreover, there is a very considerable danger to the donor that the bomb (and its source) would be discovered even before delivery or that it would be exploded in a manner and on a target the donor would not approve—including on the donor itself. Another concern would be that the terrorist group might be infiltrated by foreign intelligence.16

A second route would be for the terrorist group to steal or illicitly purchase a bomb. In the wake of the Cold War, there was great worry about such ‘loose nukes’ in unstable post-Communist Russia. However, both Russian nuclear officials and experts on the Russian nuclear programme point out that those bombs are difficult to maintain and have a lifespan of one to three years, after which they become ‘radioactive scrap metal’.17 Even some of those most alarmed by the prospect of atomic terrorism have concluded that, ‘It is probably true that there are no “loose nukes”, transportable nuclear weapons missing from their proper storage locations and available for purchase in some way’.18

It might be added that Russia and other nuclear powers have an intense interest in controlling any weapons on their territory. Stephen Younger, former head of nuclear weapons research and development at Los Alamos National Laboratory, notes, ‘Regardless of what is reported in the news, all nuclear nations take the security of their weapons very seriously’.19

Moreover, as technology has developed, finished bombs have been outfitted with devices that will trigger a non-nuclear explosion that will destroy the bomb if it is tampered with.20 And there are other security techniques: bombs can be kept disassembled with the component parts stored in separate high-security vaults, and procedures can be organized so that two people and multiple codes are required not only to use the bomb, but also to store, to maintain, and to deploy it.21

Since terrorists are unlikely to be able to buy or steal a useable bomb, and since they are further unlikely to have one handed to them by an established nuclear state, the most plausible route for terrorists would be to manufacture the device themselves from purloined materials. This is the route identified by a majority of leading experts as the most likely to lead to nuclear terrorism.22 Because of the dangers and difficulties of transporting and working with plutonium, a dedicated terrorist group, it is generally further agreed, would choose to try to use highly enriched uranium.23 The idea would be to obtain as much of this stuff as necessary and then to fashion it into an explosive.

The likely product of this effort would not be a bomb that can be dropped or hurled, since this would massively complicate the delivery problem. Rather, the terrorists would seek to come up with an ‘improvised nuclear device’ (IND) of the simplest design—one that could be set off at the target by a suicidal detonation crew. This would be a ‘gun’ type of device in which masses of highly enriched uranium are hurled at each other within a tube. At best, such a device would be, as even the deeply concerned Allison acknowledges, ‘large, cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and inefficient’.24 The process is a daunting one, even in this minimal case. In particular, the task requires a considerable series of difficult hurdles to be conquered and in sequence.

At the present time and likely for the foreseeable future, stateless groups are simply incapable of manufacturing the required fissile material for a bomb because the process requires an effort on an industrial scale.25 Moreover, they are unlikely to be supplied with the material by a state for the same reasons a state is unlikely to give them a workable bomb. Thus, they would need to steal or illicitly purchase this crucial material.

The terrorist thieves would also need to know exactly what they want and where it is, and this presumably means trusting bribed, but not necessarily dependable, insiders. And to even begin to pull off such a heist, the terrorists would need to develop a highly nuanced street sense in foreign areas often filled with people who are suspicious of strangers.26 This approach requires the terrorists to pay off a host of greedy confederates, including brokers and money transmitters, any one of whom could turn on them or, either out of guile or incompetence, furnish them with stuff that is useless. Insiders might also come to ruminate over the fact that, once the heist had been accomplished, the terrorists would (as Jenkins puts it none too delicately) ‘have every incentive to cover their trail, beginning with eliminating their confederates’.27

In addition, because of improving nuclear safeguards and accounting practices, it is decreasingly likely that the theft would remain undetected.28 This is an important development because, once it is noticed that some uranium is missing, the authorities would investigate the few people who might have been able to assist the thieves, and one who seems suddenly to have become prosperous is likely to arrest their attention right from the start.