[iwar] [fc:Suddenly,.Small.Gaps.In.Nuclear.Security.Are.Starting.To.Look.More.Like.Chasms]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-17 21:33:33
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Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 21:33:33 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Suddenly,.Small.Gaps.In.Nuclear.Security.Are.Starting.To.Look.More.Like.Chasms]
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Suddenly, Small Gaps In Nuclear Security Are Starting To Look More Like Chasms

By John Emshwiller, Michael Orey, Daniel Machalaba and Rebecca Smith,
The Wall Street Journal, 10/17/2001
No URL available.

In February, Jamal Ahmed Mohamed al-Fadl, a longtime member of Osama bin
Laden's al Qaeda organization, gave some unsettling testimony in New
York federal court: He helped arrange meetings in Khartoum, Sudan, in
the early 1990s with the aim of helping al Qaeda acquire uranium. 

Mr.  al-Fadl, who testified that he was told that "it's easy to kill
more people with uranium," said he didn't know whether the deal
ultimately went through.  His testimony came in connection with the
federal indictment against Mr.  bin Laden and others for their alleged
roles in the 1998 bombings of two U.S.  embassies in Africa. 

The evidence that Mr.  bin Laden's group has tried to obtain
weapons-grade nuclear material is sketchy and unverified.  But it has
sent authorities around the world rushing to shore up security measures
that are in some cases surprisingly weak.  The armed guards at
nuclear-weapons depots often lose in exercises with mock assailants. 
Materials for making a nuclear bomb are accessible enough to support a
black market. 

The first reaction after Sept.  11 was to tighten security.  Kansas
officials are keeping fishermen off a lake near the Wolf Creek nuclear
plant.  Japan ordered round-the-clock patrols of the waters near its
nuclear plants.  France, which even encouraged school trips to its many
nuclear-power plants to promote acceptance, has severely restricted
access to facilities.  Authorities in the Czech Republic tightened
airspace restrictions over nuclear power stations. 

The U.S.  Department of Energy briefly halted shipments of nuclear
materials.  Just last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
temporarily closed its Web site, saying that it had to review all the
material as part of "our mission to protect public health and safety."

Corbin McNeill Jr., the chairman of the Chicago-based power company
Exelon Corp., has a plan for making future nuclear plants more resistant
to an airborne assault by terrorists: Bury them.  He's thinking that if
and when Exelon builds a new-generation nuclear plant, most of the
structure and equipment will be housed below the surface of the earth. 
"There should be no vital components above ground," he says. 

"The whole world has been turned upside down" by the events of Sept. 
11, says Richard Meserve, chairman of the NRC, which oversees commercial
security measures for nuclear-power plants.  "We have to re-examine our
entire capability to withstand a terrorist attack."

The means for carrying out nuclear attacks are scattered around the
globe -- in the form of hundreds of commercial nuclear plants, tens of
thousands of nuclear weapons and tons of stored uranium and plutonium
that could be fashioned into bombs.  Efforts to make nuclear materials
more secure have been hampered by tight budgets, geopolitical squabbling
and inertia. 

While security has frayed in many places, authorities believe that a
nuclear assault by terrorists remains unlikely.  Since Hiroshima, 56
years ago, there have been few significant breaches of security anywhere
in the world that could have produced a nuclear weapon or incident, and
there have been no incidents.  Besides the technical barriers to making
a nuclear bomb, nuclear weapons and bomb-grade material have always been
relatively well-guarded. 

Authorities have long counted on the technical barrier -- namely, that
designing and fabricating a nuclear device remains a formidable
challenge.  Despite the sophistication of Mr.  bin Laden's al Queda
network, the prospect of terrorists going nuclear is still "highly
unlikely," says Graham Andrew, a senior official at the Vienna-based
International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations-related body
created to prevent the proliferation of atomic weapons. 

But the possibility remains.  A draft report for an IAEA conference in
May cited intelligence-agency and other reports of bin Laden efforts to
obtain small nuclear weapons, with the devices to be possibly stored in
Afghanistan.  The draft report, prepared by Alex Schmid,
officer-in-charge of the United Nations' Terrorism Prevention Branch,
stated that while he hadn't seen evidence that the terrorist had
succeeded, "it's clear that bin Laden is actively seeking to acquire
weapons of mass destruction." Mr.  Schmid declined to be interviewed.  A
U.S.  intelligence official says intelligence sources also have reported
efforts by Mr.  bin Laden's organization to acquire nuclear weapons. 

The technical barrier also seems to have gotten lower.  A 1998 report by
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign-policy think
tank in Washington, found that "a number of American college students
have come up with plausible designs based on unclassified information."

The simplest bomb to build would resemble the one used over Hiroshima. 
It essentially involves placing two slugs of highly enriched uranium in
a tube and driving them together with an explosive charge -- a design
that is considered so reliable that bomb experts say it doesn't even
have to be tested.  Weapons experts say this sort of bomb could be built
with about 125 pounds of uranium -- though more-sophisticated designs
require far less material. 

Such a bomb would produce a blast equivalent to about 15,000 tons of TNT
and, in a city, could kill more than 100,000 people, says Robert
Gallucci, dean of the Georgetown University foreign-service school who
worked on nuclear-proliferation issues for the State Department. 
Scientists estimate that the explosions and subsequent fires that took
down the World Trade Center released energy the equivalent of about
1,000 tons of TNT. 

Building a 'Dirty Bomb'

Far easier to build, and much less deadly, is a "dirty bomb," in which
conventional explosives are used to spread radioactive material.  The
key to averting this and any other nuclear threat, security experts say,
is keeping nuclear material out of terrorists' hands, particularly
plutonium or highly enriched uranium, which are what is needed to create
nuclear fission. 

That means wiping out the shadowy black market for nuclear materials. 
The biggest potential source of such material is Russia and other parts
of the old Soviet Union -- though the IAEA considers all the ex-Soviet
Republics, except Russia itself, free of nuclear weapons.  Here, too,
information can be incomplete and even contradictory.  Take the Russian
"suitcase" bombs. 

Republican Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania recalls that in
hearings held in 1997, retired Russian Gen.  Alexander Lebed testified
that Russian authorities couldn't account for dozens of portable nuclear
bombs once in the Soviet arsenal and designed for use behind enemy lines
to blow up specific objects, such as tunnels or power stations.  Mr. 
Weldon said other top Russian military officials, including former
Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told him directly that such devices
existed.  More recently, both U.S.  and Russian officials have issued
statements denying the Soviets ever built such weapons.  Portable atomic
demolition devices produced by the U.S.  military were all dismantled by
1989, a Defense Department official adds. 

Watchdog groups such as the nonprofit Monterey Institute of
International Studies in Monterey, Calif., which attempt to verify
reports of nuclear proliferation, keep track of various incidents in
which nuclear materials may have escaped the grip of governments.  In
the Monterey files is an example from 1998 when the Russian Federal
Security Service announced that it had thwarted an attempt by employees
at a facility in the Chelyabinsk region to steal around 40 pounds of
nuclear material.  Matthew Bunn, a nonproliferation expert at Harvard
University, says an official with the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy
told him the material had been highly enriched uranium.  Vladislav
Petrov, a spokesman for Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, maintains
that this incident "did not happen."

Some bomb-grade material does seem to have made its way out of Russia. 
In 1994, Czech officials seized nearly six pounds of enriched uranium
from a car in Prague.  Investigators in that case believed that the
material came from one of two Russian facilities.  Mr.  Petrov, however,
says the Czechs never allowed Russia to test the material to determine
its origin.  The information about the theft "was created by their
special services," he says, "to show that Russia isn't in control of its
uranium."

One of the suspect facilities in the Czech case is the Mayak nuclear
materials production complex in the Chelyabinsk region, which is home to
a number of nuclear facilities.  In a visit to Mayak last year, former
Energy Department official Rose Gottemoeller says she found several tons
of plutonium "stored in simple bucketlike containers." It would be "easy
to carry," she notes, "if you could get through the wooden door or
nonbarred window." Although a joint Russian-U.S.  venture was in the
process of upgrading security at Mayak during her visit, Ms. 
Gottemoeller notes, it was just starting to install a perimeter fence. 
That fence has now been completed, according to Sarah Lennon, a DOE
official.  She also says windows have been bricked up and that other
security improvements are in progress. 

Ms.  Gottemoeller also visited Russian Naval facilities in 1999 and
2000, where she said that nuclear weapons being moved on and off of
ships were kept in shacklike buildings on the base.  The DOE's Ms. 
Lennon says there is an "aggressive program under way" to improve
security measures for the Russian Navy's weapons. 

Behind on Upgrades

For the past eight years, the U.S.  government has been helping the
Russian government shore up security at its nuclear installations.  So
far, though, upgrades have been completed for less than 40% of the more
than 660 tons of enriched uranium and plutonium not contained in
Russia's nuclear-weapon stockpiles, says Mr.  Bunn, who is also a former
Clinton adviser on nuclear proliferation.  In a Sept.  19 letter to
President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr.  Bunn wrote
that "over the past five years, many of the major U.S.-Russian
cooperative nuclear security programs have slowed" and "had their
timelines unnecessarily extended into the future."

Jonathan Kiell, a spokesman for the DOE, insists that major strides have
been made in helping Russia secure its nuclear material and in
redirecting the activities of Russian weapons scientists.  However, he
says, "following the attacks of Sept.  11, [the DOE] is evaluating
possibilities of accelerating its [security program], based on guidance
from the administration."

As the U.S.  has pondered the post-Cold War nuclear threat, attention
has focused on a "rogue" nation attacking the continental U.S.  with a
missile.  But many national-security experts worry about a much simpler
scenario, particularly now that the efficacy of suicide attacks in the
U.S.  has been proven.  If overseas terrorists wanted to get a nuclear
weapon into the U.S., the most likely means would be by ship, they say. 
About nine million shipping containers, typically 20 or 40 feet long,
enter American ports each year. 

For years, U.S.  Customs Service inspectors have worn small devices to
detect radiation in containers.  So far, the searches have found
radioactive cheese from Ukraine's Chernobyl region and medical devices
that use radioactivity for diagnostics.  Officials also routinely review
shipping documents looking for suspicious cargo, which are then subject
to X-ray or physical searches. 

But tearing apart containers is time-consuming and labor-intensive.  On
Oct.  5, for example, two customs inspectors in a warehouse at the port
in Elizabeth, N.J., strained to lift and heave bags of birdseed out of a
container that had arrived from Ethiopia.  Another inspector removed
boxes of sweatpants from Pakistan.  An X-ray check had showed an oddly
shaped object near the trailer door.  "It could be a booby trap or a
trigger for a device," said Kevin McCabe, chief inspector for the Port
of New York and New Jersey.  It turned out that one of the pants boxes
had fallen and wedged itself against the door. 

Since Sept.  11, the Customs Service has increased the number of
inspectors and inspections nationally.  At the New York/New Jersey port,
the inspection force has expanded by more than a third to 100.  The
number of containers X-rayed has had an "appreciable increase" to about
500 daily, says Mr.  McCabe. 

However, more than 5,000 containers enter that port daily.  Given this
river of cargo, officials admit something could slip by.  "If you can
smuggle heroin in containers, you may be able to smuggle a nuclear
bomb," says Charles Raymond, chief executive officer of CSX Lines, the
container-shipping subsidiary of Richmond, Va.-based CSX Corp. 

Some people argue that would-be nuclear terrorists can find what they
need at U.S.  weapons plants.  With the end of the Cold War, security
budgets shrunk at the weapons facilities, which are operated by the
Department of Energy. 

Since 1992, the number of guards at DOE facilities nationwide dropped
about 40% to around 3,500, according to Edward McCallum, former director
of the DOE's Office of Safeguards and Security, in a statement last June
to a congressional committee.  The reductions have made it "questionable
at some facilities whether the DOE Protective Force could defeat an
adversary," wrote Mr.  McCallum, whose outspoken criticism of security
measures contributed to his departure from the Energy Department in
1999. 

For years, the DOE has used mock terrorists in simulated attacks to test
security at weapons plants.  Often, U.S.  military personnel and plant
guard forces do battle with harmless laser weapons as the attackers try
to make off with objects that represent containers of plutonium or
uranium. 

In a Sept.  13 letter to Sen.  Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican and
vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Peter
Stockton, a former top Energy Department security consultant, said the
DOE guard forces "lose well over 50%" of the time in these mock battles
-- "a clear indicator that a number of facilities cannot protect" their
weapons and weapons-grade material.  In one case cited by Mr.  Stockton,
attackers at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory brought along a garden
cart to haul off their booty. 

The Project on Government Oversight, a private watchdog group, issued a
report earlier this month recommending that the government consolidate
the tons of bomb-grade material from the 10 sites in two underground
facilities, possibly to be protected by the U.S.  military.  Currently,
the Energy Department contracts with private security firms. 

Glenn Podonsky, a senior DOE security official, says the agency believes
its weapons-grade material is adequately guarded.  While there have been
some reductions in guard forces, these partly reflect changing
government security requirements and the closing of some facilities, Mr. 
Podonsky says.  As for the mock attacks, "we don't track the results on
a win/lose basis," he says.  Rather, they are used to evaluate
protection strategies and individual responses by guards. 

After the Sept.  11 attacks, DOE facilities went to a heightened state
of alert and the agency is reviewing what further steps might be needed. 
"Sept.  11 changes a lot for everybody," says Mr.  Podonsky. 

At commercial nuclear-power plants, the main worry is that terrorists
would turn a reactor into a sort of giant radiation-dispersal device. 
Disabling a plant's safety systems could lead to a catastrophic
radiation release, similar to the one caused by the 1986 accident at the
Chernobyl nuclear plant.  There, radiation releases contaminated a huge
swath of land, quickly killed several dozen people and exposed tens of
thousands of others to dangerous doses of radioactivity. 

Like the Energy Department, the NRC runs mock terrorist raids against
power plants.  The NRC won't reveal specific results, but "there have
been instances where infiltrators have gotten far enough inside and
stayed long enough where they could have planted bombs," says an agency
spokesman. 

But the NRC has halted the mock terrorist attacks, at least temporarily. 
"This is not a wise time to be holding exercises," says Mr.  Meserve,
the NRC chairman.  "It could be used as the cover for an actual attack."

-- Guy Chazan in Moscow contributed to this article. 

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