Nuclear Terrorism Threat Is Skewed by Mistaken Assumptions

Victims of a mock nuclear terrorist attack
are treated during a Honolulu, Hawaii
drill in 2006. (Marco Garcia/ Getty News)

Nuclear weapons and terrorism make a frightening sounding combination, and one that is increasingly being considered as plausible by some nonproliferation experts and policy makers. It is periodically reported that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden seeks nuclear weapons, or is in possession of nuclear materials.

However, possession isn't the key factor in nuclear capability, according to a recent analysis by Dr. Sonia ben Ouagrham-Gormley in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists . In her view, most analyses of the nuclear terrorist threat are flawed by their assumption that acquiring nuclear materials is the biggest challenge faced by would-be nuclear terrorists. This misconception leads us to overestimate some threats and miss others.

In fact, she writes, there are more powerful obstacles facing terrorists, who are harder pressed than we might think to get the right kinds of nuclear materials and to know how to use them. But we tend to believe two myths that stand our way of understanding real threats.

The first myth is that nuclear know-how is no further than a google search away, in this era of global communications. However, Ouagrham-Gormley writers, "specialized know-how... is difficult to come by." Explicit knowledge, such as plans or formulas, are difficult to mobilize unless a would-be bomb maker also has "tacit knowledge," which comes from experience and interacitons with others working on nuclear materials.

The second myth:the widespread belief that there is "a nuclear black market in the former Soviet Union." Oragrham-Gormley contends that there is no "market" because it lacks an established client base. Smugglers usually don't get their wares to their destination and, moreover, most materials that are traded have little value in making either a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb.

Ouagrham-Gormley concludes that our mistaken understanding of nuclear know-how and the arms market are leading us to miss looking at more viable threats: the capabilities that terrorists and states already possess.