On the Nuclear Threat

Just a short item duly noting the article in USA Today about today's hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Not much new here:

"The prospect of terrorists detonating a nuclear device on American soil sometime within the next quarter-century is real and growing," according to prepared testimony from Gary Anthony Ackerman, research director of the Homeland Security Department-funded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

In testimony, Charlie Allen, intelligence chief at the Homeland Security Department, said he does not believe that any terrorist group has a nuclear device in hand, but "the terrorist threat is dynamic and constantly evolving."

A nuclear weapon isn't a likely method of attack for terrorists, mostly due to technical constraints. But it certainly can't be ignored.

Update 2008-04-04: DHS has posted Charlie Allen's prepared statement. One highlight:

As you can appreciate however, there are non-trivial challenges to developing a nuclear device—primarily the acquisition of sufficient weapons-usable nuclear material. This is the biggest obstacle; without sufficient amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material, a terrorist cannot develop a nuclear weapon.

Additional obstacles include devising a feasible nuclear design, device fabrication, and avoiding detection during delivery to target.

It's for these reasons I'm not convinced a nuclear weapon is the first choice of terrorists. While it may be the weapon that fills their nights with happy dreams, the barriers to acquiring, transporting, and using a nuclear weapon are greater than any other attack mode.

With a nuclear weapon, the risk of failure also carries enormous additional weight. With a nuclear weapon, there's a nontrivial risk that the thing will fizzle or not work at all. And imagine that scenario from the perspective of a terrorist group. They acquire the materials, build and transport the weapon, then...phhhbt. Not only would the attack fail, but they would risk setting off a worldwide tsunami of anger and retribution. The gloves would come off, in a way they didn't even after 9/11.

At least in the short-term, it seems more likely that they will use proven methods of attack for smaller incidents (e.g., car bombs), and creativity and surprise for larger attacks (e.g., 9/11).

Stopping Nukes at the 11th Hour?

This week's Sunday LA Times ran a story about the multi-agency effort to hunt nuclear materials and interdict a potential nuclear terrorist attack before it happens.

About every three days, unknown to most Americans, an elite team of federal scientists hits the streets in the fight against nuclear terrorism.

More than two dozen specialized teams have been positioned across the nation to respond to threats of nuclear terrorism, and as many 2,000 scientists and bomb experts participate in the effort.

Scientists in specially equipped helicopters and airplanes use radiation detectors to scan cities for signs of weapons. They blend into crowds at major sporting events, wearing backpacks containing instruments that can identify plutonium or highly enriched uranium.

If the many layers of federal defense against nuclear smuggling break down, these unarmed weapons designers and physicists, along with experts from the FBI, could be the last hope of staving off a catastrophic attack.

They are supposed to rush up to a ticking nuclear explosive (or a "dirty" bomb, which would disperse radioactive material) and defuse it before it's too late -- a situation often depicted by Hollywood that seems less fictional every year.

Hoo boy. "Hollywood" is right.

While I don't deny that these are smart, capable people, I have serious doubts about the efficacy of these efforts. This is last-hour, last-minute stuff - which works great in a movie script but perhaps not so well in the real world.

It's worth noting that these teams are looking primarily for the materials in nuclear weapons - plutonium and highly-enriched uranium. These materials are comparatively difficult to detect. It's needle-and-haystack thinking to suggest that these teams will be likely to interdict them in a crowd at a sports stadium, or while walking down the Vegas strip or a Manhattan street. Moreover, if a terrorist team were ever to acquire a nuclear bomb and transport it to the U.S., they wouldn't have to detonate it at the sports stadium or Strip itself. With a nuclear weapon, "close" is good enough.

The real effort must always be at the earlier stages of prevention: Recognizing threats before they become fully operational, and deterring these threatening elements from acquiring dangerous materials.

We are, of course, doing some of these things - working to deter the threat before it reaches our shores:

[T]he United States is retrieving and locking down nuclear fuels abroad, has created a line of radiation detectors at foreign and domestic ports, and has increased intelligence efforts.

It's these efforts that have a chance of reliably preventing the threat. The best we can say about the last-minute approach is that it's "not impossible" to imagine it might work:

If those and other measures fail, the emergency response teams are a last hope, but one nobody should rely on, said Charles B. Curtis, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which pushes for stronger efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism.

Intercepting a device "is a very, very, very difficult problem, but not impossible," said Curtis, a former Energy Department deputy secretary.

Vahid Majidi, a nuclear weapons chemist and head of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, seemed more confident. Asked how good his chances would be to find a nuclear bomb in Manhattan with 24 hours' warning, he said, "Quite reasonable."

Well, yes. If we have solid intelligence and 24 hours' warning, then it's reasonable to think we might be able to interdict and remove the threat. But these types of threats don't script themselves so neatly.

It's much better to train first responders to recognize all aspects of the threat (as the FDNY does in its counterterrorism strategy) and attack it from its earliest stages.

The last minute is just too late.

The Nuclear Threat: A Close Look

The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) has just released the Securing the Bomb 2007 report on the threat of nuclear terrorism. The report focuses on the risk of detonation of a nuclear weapon, primarily by terrorists. It pays little comparatively attention to other nuclear risks such as "dirty bombs" or attacks/accidents at nuclear power facilities.

NTI makes clear, early on, that the risk is real. There are two main scenarios: Either a terrorist group steals or buys a nuclear weapon on the black-market (perhaps stolen from Russia or Pakistan), or a terrorist group acquires nuclear material (either highly enriched uranium [HEU] or plutonium) with the intent of making a nuclear weapon. For technical reasons, HEU would be the more likely choice, as HEU can be used in a simpler "gun" type device.

NTI makes clear that the risk is realistic, even if it's remote compared to other risks such as conventional explosives.

A terrorist's first problem would be acquiring the material. The good news is that they can't make it on their own - it's too technically difficult. But it may be possible to acquire it, especially through three potential avenues:

[I]t appears that the highest risks of nuclear theft today are in Russia, Pakistan, and at HEU-fueled research reactors.

Russia has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons and materials, and remains the only state in the world where authorities have confirmed that terrorists have been carrying out reconnaissance at nuclear warhead storage sites.

[I]n February 2006, Russian citizen Oleg Khinsagov was arrested (along with three Georgian accomplices) with some 100 grams of HEU enriched to 89% U-235. The arrest was part of a sting operation in which a Georgian government agent posed as an Islamist buyer for a “serious organization.”

The risk of theft is real:

Today, security for the world’s vast and widely distributed nuclear stockpiles varies enormously, from excellent to appalling.

[A] substantial number of incidents of actual theft of weapons-usable nuclear material have occurred. ... The IAEA database on nuclear smuggling includes 15 incidents of real theft and smuggling of separated plutonium or HEU confirmed by the states involved.

In Russia, Chechen terrorists (some of whom have close links to al Qaeda) have carried out reconnaissance at nuclear weapon storage sites.

Locally, the greatest risk comes from research reactors:

More than 140 research reactors around the world are still fueled by HEU (though usually in forms that would require modest chemical processing before the material could be used in a bomb), and many of these facilities have modest security in place—no more than a night watchman and a chain-link fence in some cases.

A majority of research reactors are either in the United States or Russia.

Even at U.S. research reactors - especially at universities - security is relatively low:

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) security rules for research reactors are remarkably weak. ... U.S. HEU-fueled research reactors regulated by the NRC continue to have only the most modest security measures in place.

[As of the end of 2007] there will be 19 remaining HEU-fueled research reactors in the United States, of which 8 are licensed by the NRC.

Most civilian research reactors have very modest security. Some are located on university campuses, where providing serious security against terrorist attack would be virtually impossible—and where many of the operators are students, who cycle through frequently, making it extraordinarily difficult to provide serious checks of potential insider thieves.

In mid-2005 an investigation by ABC News documented conditions ranging from sleeping guards to security doors propped open with books at nearly all of the 26 U.S. university-based research reactors, including those with HEU.

None of the U.S. NRC-regulated HEU-fueled research reactors should be considered adequately secured against plausible terrorist and criminal threats (though several have either very modest amounts of HEU on-site, or HEU that is quite radioactive).

Once weapons-capable nuclear material has been stolen, especially HEU, it's virtually impossible to detect and locate. Unlike many nuclear materials (such as the fuel for a nuclear power plant), HEU gives off relatively little radiation, making it possible to transport with only minimal shielding.

[O]nce nuclear material has been stolen, it could be anywhere, and all the subsequent layers of defense, unfortunately, are variations on looking for needles in haystacks.

Moreover, the radioactivity from these materials is weak and difficult to detect from any substantial distance. ... You still can’t detect a nuclear device unless you are close to it.

Radiation detectors ... would have essentially no chance of detecting “clean” HEU with even modest shielding.

Even the expensive new Advanced Spectroscopic Portals now being developed would not substantially improve the ability to detect shielded HEU.

As drug smugglers and illegal immigrants have amply shown, it is not hard to sneak into the United States:

The myriad routes across the world’s scantily protected borders make nuclear smuggling almost impossible to stop. ... Attempting to protect the United States from nuclear terrorism by detecting and stopping nuclear contraband at the U.S. borders is like a football team defending at its own goal line.

And although terrorists could not enrich uranium themselves, it is conceivable that they could develop and transport a crude weapon:

Terrorists would need about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of HEU for the simplest gun-type bomb—an amount of material roughly the size of a six-pack.

Even before the Afghan war, U.S. intelligence concluded that “fabrication of at least a ‘crude’ nuclear device was within al-Qa’ida’s capabilities, if it could obtain fissile material.”

Even a fully assembled bomb of the crude type terrorists might make could fit in a truck, a fishing boat, a small plane, or the hold of a yacht.

So there is some level of realistic threat, despite the technical difficulties involved and the challenge of acquiring fissile material.

How to solve the problem? A lot of the potential solutions would be in the jurisdiction of agencies such as the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, along with the State Department and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for international efforts.

However, there is a local element to solving this problem. Police work is extremely important:

Almost all of the known interdictions have resulted from good police or intelligence work—from sting operations, or from people who became aware of the conspiracy deciding to inform the authorities. There are a wide range of steps that can and should be taken to strengthen international police and intelligence cooperation, to pursue additional demand stings (posing as buyers of nuclear material or expertise) and supply stings (posing as sellers), and to encourage the semi-feudal chieftains who control some of the world’s most dangerous borders to let us know about transports of nuclear material.

Some local police agencies have even provided security for local research reactors:

At the reactor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), since 9/11, there have been 1-2 Cambridge police officers with side-arms on-site to provide security—though these are not required by NRC rules. (Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the facility had no armed guards on-site, relying on response from off-site campus police of-ficers in the event of a problem.)

Other law enforcement activities, such as preventing recruiting and curtailing financial activities, may also be effective:

Terrorist efforts to recruit people with relevant expertise—such as nuclear physicists, metallurgists, or uranium machinists—may be one of the more detectable activities associated with a nuclear weapons effort. To increase awareness of this potential problem (and increase the chance that such recruitment attempts would be reported), police and intelligence agencies should seek to build relationships at locations that may pose particular opportunities for such recruiting efforts.

[I]t is worth making a major effort to change the conditions that make it easier for extreme Islamist terrorist groups to recruit and raise funds—to reduce the dangers of all forms of terrorism, not just nuclear terrorism.

Given the global nature of the threat, as well as the technical expertise required for dealing with nuclear materials, local officials may have relatively limited options to deal with the threat of nuclear terrorism; but that's not the same thing as having no options.

Preparedness: Are We REALLY Sure?

It's hard to see the justification behind this:

The nation is preparing for its biggest terrorism exercise ever next week when three fictional "dirty bombs" go off and cripple transportation arteries in two major U.S. cities and Guam, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

Yet even as this drill begins, details from the previous national exercise held in 2005 have yet to be publicly released — information that's supposed to help officials prepare for the next real attack.

"The challenge with TOPOFF is not the exercise itself. It's to move as quickly as possible to remedy what perceives to be the problems that are uncovered," former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in an interview with AP this week.

Yes indeed.

Ridge, who launched his own security consulting company on Monday, said he's a big fan of the TOPOFF exercises. But he said "it's not acceptable" that the review from the 2005 exercise is still not released publicly.

The after action report from TOPOFF 3, which deals with issues that came up in the 2005 exercise, is supposed to identify areas for improvement. That report is still going through internal reviews.

If one were feeling snarky, one might wonder if al Qaeda uses a similar review process.

According to a brief summary of the 2005 exercise — marked For Official Use Only, but obtained by AP — problems arose when officials realized the federal government's law for providing assistance does not cover biological incidents.

Hmm ... no clear authority for biological incidents. That sounds familiar.

How to Stay Put

In a new report, the Redefining Readiness Workgroup argues that, with better preparedness on the part of communities, citizens can successfully shelter in place in the event of an emergency:

In 2004, the Redefining Readiness study found that many people will not be able to shelter in place in an emergency. Exploring how the American public would handle a “dirty bomb” explosion, the study found that only three-fifths (59%) of the population would stay inside a building other than their own home for as long as officials told them. This is cause for concern because people who do not shelter in place will endanger themselves and others. When they go outside, they will expose themselves to toxic dust and radiation, and when they open the door to leave, they will put others in the building at risk by letting dust and radiation inside.

The Redefining Readiness study showed that three-quarters of the people who would not be able to shelter in place under existing conditions would do so if certain issues were addressed.

To examine how to resolve these issues, the RR Workgroup conducted discussions in a variety of communities, in which a number of residents examined the problems they might experience in a sheltering-in-place event. Many of the findings are pretty obvious, but a few are worth highlighting:

People can’t protect themselves by sheltering in place unless they have timely, specific, and believable information about the emergency.

Informing people about the emergency and what to do is important, but the ability of people to protect themselves by sheltering in place depends on a lot more than communication and public education.

Much of what people and organizations currently are being told to do does little to help and sometimes makes matters worse. ... Currently, the public is being instructed to keep a supply of food and water in their homes, and most keep their medications there as well. But in a shelter-in-place emergency many people will need to take shelter in buildings other than their homes ...

Managers are also being told to identify “safe rooms” where people can go to be protected from toxic substances outside. But while detailed instructions are usually given for sealing the room, little or no attention is paid to identifying and preparing rooms that:

(1) can accommodate the number of people who are likely to need shelter;
(2) give the people inside safe access to the supplies and facilities that are critical to meeting their basic, medical, and emotional needs;
(3) assure breathable air and tolerable temperatures; and
(4) minimize other conditions that can provoke unruly or violent behavior.

Rather than tell people what to do, the RR Workgroup presents a series of questions for citizens to think about, in 4 contexts:

• Households
• Workplaces
• Childcare settings, including schools
• Government settings

The questions provide good food for thought, but some of them are general and of limited use to a person without specific information about the threat. For example:

How will we be protected from toxic substances outside if we are some place else at the time of the emergency, such as at work, school, day care, shopping, or in a restaurant?

The answer depends on which toxic substance you're talking about, where you are in relation to it, what your options are for sheltering in place, etc.

My biggest question is simple: How do you ensure that people will drill it? Compared to other, more common risks (e.g., fires, storms), accidents or attacks that might involve sheltering in place are relatively rare. Especially in contexts such as workplaces and schools, employees and students won't act correctly in an emergency unless they've drilled it.

Imagining the Unimaginable

Following yesterday's news that nations are making their nuclear weapons smaller, an interesting op-ed regarding the nuclear threat appeared in the New York Times today by former SecDef William Perry and Assistant SecDef Ashton Carter, along with Michael May, former head of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Their focus: What happens if terrorists succeed in striking the U.S. with a nuclear weapon? What then? Are we prepared?

It's safe to say that many citizens probably don't know or don't remember the lessons taught in Cold War classrooms. But what about local, state, and federal leaders? What about first responders?

Perry, Carter and May make the case for preparedness:

It turns out that much could be done to save lives and ensure that civilization endures in such terrible circumstances.

For those within a two-mile-wide circle around a Hiroshima-sized detonation ... little could be done. But most of a city’s residents, being farther away, would have more choices. What should they do as they watch a cloud of radioactive debris rise and float downwind like the dust from the twin towers on 9/11? Those lucky enough to be upwind could remain in their homes if they knew which way the fallout plume was blowing. (The federal government has the ability to determine that and to quickly broadcast the information.) But for those downwind and more than a few miles from ground zero, the best move would be to shelter in a basement for three days or so and only then leave the area.

Radioactive fallout rapidly loses its potency; after just 5 days it's just 20 percent as strong as on the first day, and after about two weeks, it's close to zero.

Do people know that the infamous duct tape is useful in such circumstances? (You want to keep out dust.) Who's going to tell them?

Will they rely on the Emergency Alert System? Despite recent upgrades, the EAS is of questionable reliability. It's never even been tested on a national level.

Other issues:

[C]hoices would face first responders and troops sent to the stricken area: how close to ground zero could they go, and for how long?

Finally, as buildings and lives were destroyed, so would the sense of safety and well-being of survivors, and this in turn could lead to panic. Contingency plans for the day after a nuclear blast should demonstrate to Americans that all three branches of government can work in unison and under the Constitution to respond to the crisis and prevent further destruction.

The authors also point out that, in the aftermath of a nuclear event, city residents will become refugees, and they may send their children to live in the country for some time. Rural planning is just as important as urban planning.

Radiation Detection Update

An update on earlier posts regarding radiation detection:

HLS Watch points out that the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) is starting a project to evaluate radiation detection systems at ports - specifically, at the transfer point from ship to rail:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will soon begin conducting multiple projects in the Port of Tacoma, Wash., to evaluate technology and concepts of operations for radiation detection that will scan cargo at various points in transfer from ship to rail. By establishing a Rail Test Center (RTC) at the port, DHS will identify and evaluate radiological and nuclear detection solutions for intermodal rail port facilities that can be used across the country.

As I've argued before, a detection system is necessary but not sufficient to address the threat. A system of detectors, no matter how robust, is essentially a series of nets intended to snare an adversary.

Nets can be avoided, however. A comprehensive preventive scheme should exploit all aspects of the threat: the adversary, his motivations, his capabilities, his financial and human resources, his access to weapons, and his access to the target.

Cross-posted in IPS Blogs at the Institute for Preventive Strategies.

UK Report on WMD Risk

More housecleaning:

In February the Chatham House (a UK think tank) published a report on the risk of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism. It's essentially a concise, well researched primer on these threats. First, a few notes on the overall CBRN threat:

It is appropriate to think of CBRN as a system, offering all that might be required for a range of terrorist groups from the largest to the smallest, from the almost casual to the most organized, and from the poorest to the best funded.

In the absence of the Cold War military imperative, not only has genuine interest mounted in the civilian applications of WMD-relevant technology, but the illegal proliferation of sensitive technology, materials and knowledge has proved both more tempting and more possible. In short, WMD technology has increasingly become something of a commodity since the end of the Cold War.

Next a few notes on each threat:

Chemical

First, the precursor chemicals for chemical weapons (CW) are widely distributed:

Many of the CW precursor chemicals are ‘dual use’ in that they have civil industrial applications: mustard gas requires ethyl alcohol, sodium sulphide and bleach; thiodiglycol is used for ball-point pen ink, but is also ‘only one chemical step removed’ from mustard gas; the chemical ingredients for tabun (GA) are used in pesticides, those for sarin (GB) in flame retardants, those for soman (GD) in dairy and food-processing equipment, and those for VX in pyrotechnics.

A so-called Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) could also be produced using much larger quantities of lower-grade, less enriched U-235. The device might then ‘fizzle’ rather than detonate its entire mass instantly and efficiently. But if the resulting explosion were to be equivalent to just one or a few kilotons of TNT rather than tens of kilotons, terrorists could still find this option attractive.But taking the next step - building a chemical-weapons capability and actually producing chemical weapons - is difficult, as demonstrated by the widely-cited example of Aum Shinrikyo, who launched the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway:

According to some estimates, Aum Shinrikyo’s attempts to synthesize sarin cost as much as $30 million, involved as many as 80 scientists and other people with advanced laboratory facilities, and took a year or more to achieve.

To produce CW in large-scale quantities is challenging scientifically and technologically, and the handling and weaponizing of CW are generally understood to be very hazardous.

Chemical attacks are made more complicated by environmental factors:

In general, CW are dependent for their effect on ambient weather conditions, and particularly on the temperature, the intensity of sunlight, the strength and direction of wind, and rain (especially, of course, for those agents soluble in water).

For a terrorist group, simplicity may be preferred:

A rather more straightforward option, of course, would be to buy or steal a supply of toxic industrial chemicals, for simple release in a crowded area.

That's what al Qaeda is doing with chlorine in Iraq - simply acquiring whatever they can get and using it to supplement a more conventional attack, usually a truck bomb.

Biological

Biological threats seem relatively simple. All you have to do is acquire the desired biological agent, grow it, package it, and release the biological weapon (BW) as desired - right? But it's not nearly that simple:

BW production involves four stages – acquisition, production, weaponization and delivery – the first three of which are progressively more difficult:

1. Acquisition. It would not be easy to acquire the seed stock of a pathogen or a toxin-producing organism, but it would not be impossible either.
2. Production. The manufacturing of BW agents is not straightforward. Bulk production, in particular, would be demanding and dangerous.
3. Weaponization. Weaponizing a BW agent is yet more challenging, for two reasons. First, the health and safety of those involved in BW production could scarcely be more at risk. Second, it would not be a simple matter to produce a stable device with a predictable effect. BW agents are, in general, vulnerable to environmental and weather conditions.
4. Delivery. Once the first three stages have been passed through successfully, the delivery of a BW device would be a relatively simple matter.

More generally, it should always be borne in mind that BW use would inevitably be a complex undertaking, drawing upon many branches of science and technology, including microbiology, pathology, aerosol physics, aerobiology and meteorology.

And even if the high hurdles were passed, the effects are somewhat unpredictable. In some previous instances of civilian exposure to biological agents, casualties have not been catastrophic:

In 1979 an accident at a Russian military site led to some 65,000 people being exposed to anthrax spores. Of these, only 70 were reported to have been infected with anthrax, of whom 68 died. The anthrax attacks in the United States in late 2001 also had a very limited medical effect, albeit with widespread social and political impact.

Regarding biological weapons, the bigger threat might actually be something that we don't even know about yet. The report quotes G.L. Epstein as saying:

The rapidly increasing capability, market penetration, and geographic dissemination of relevant biotechnical disciplines will inevitably bring weapons capabilities within the reach of those who may wish to use them to do harm. If it takes close to a decade to develop and license a new therapeutic vaccine, it is not today’s threat but the threat a decade from now that we need to counter. And given how much easier it is to pose a threat than to counter one, the threat ten years out may not even materialize until eight or nine years out.

Especially as biotechnology advances, this threat will become increasingly complex.

Radiological

There is a wide variance to the severity of this threat. While the lower end is not hard to imagine, the upper end of the radiological weapons (RW) threat is somewhat unknown:

The ‘maximum credible event’ could be a device (explosive or other) designed to distribute tens or even hundreds of thousands of Curies of radioactive material. Little work has been done to model the effect of such an attack.

But the motivation is there:

‘Some of the major international terror groups, including al-Qaeda, have not only the resources to carry out such an attack, but also the willing martyrs, whose participation would significantly reduce the cost and complexity of any protective systems needed to allow the perpetrator to survive long enough to carry out the attack.’

And the materials are out there:

Radiological materials are used in a wide variety of circumstances: general industry, agriculture, medicine, communications and navigation. But not all radioactive isotopes would be suitable for RW use. Among the candidates, ‘only a few stand out as being highly suitable for radiological terror’: cobalt-60; strontium-90; yttrium-90; caesium-137, iridium-192, radium-226, plutonium-238, americium-241 and californium-252.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has estimated that one licensed US radioactive source is lost every day.

While the phrase "dirty bomb" has entered the lexicon, an explosive might not be the most attractive means for dispersing radioactive material:

Radioactive material can be distributed in a variety of ways; some isotopes can be dissolved in a solvent and poured or sprayed, others can be burned or vaporized. From the point of view of a terrorist group, non-explosive delivery might offer an advantage in that authorities might be slow to suspect and detect radiological release. In the delay, radioactive material might be ingested or inhaled by yet more people, and radioactive pollution allowed to spread still further.

The main effect of a radiological weapon would probably be economic (assuming that the radioactive materials contaminated an area of economic importance, such as the business district of a major city):

There appears to be a reasonably firm consensus in the literature that while the political and economic effects of a RW attack could be extreme, only the largest conceivable RW device could kill more than scores or hundreds of people.

Thus, a recent US Department of Defense study estimated that a 100 lb (45 kg) RW device carried in a backpack, containing radioactive material used for cancer treatment, detonated in a city centre, would kill no one through radiation. However, a truck-borne device using a similar amount of explosive but with about 100 lb (45 kg) of spent nuclear fuel rods could cause lethal doses of radiation within a half-mile radius.

Nuclear

This is the ultimate nightmare, of course. Fortunately, there are only two possible materials suitable for making a nuclear weapon:

Although various nuclear isotopes are used in the construction of a nuclear weapon, at the core of any device must be a mass of sub-critical fissile material – either highly enriched uranium-235 (HEU) or separated, ‘weapons-grade’ plutonium (Pu-239).

And while a terrorist group would need specialized knowledge and plenty of resources, it's not impossible to imagine that they could build a weapon:

Graham Allison, writing in late 2003, claimed that ‘given the right materials – a grapefruit- or soccer ball-sized amount of fissionable material is sufficient – several masters-level engineering students … with several hundred thousand dollars and the type of equipment you could purchase off the shelf at Radio Shack could make a device that would explode. The last time I checked, researchers at Los Alamos, trying to develop strategies to combat this threat, had come up with sixty-nine different workable designs for a nuclear device.’ Barnaby makes a similar point: ‘The difficulty of designing and fabricating a nuclear weapon … is often exaggerated. A competent group of nuclear physicists, and electronics and explosives engineers, given adequate resources and access to the literature, would have little difficulty in designing and constructing such a weapon from scratch. They would not need access to any classified literature.’

If that's not possible, another option exists:

Another alternative might be to eschew nuclear weapons development and delivery altogether, and instead ‘deliver’ an attack on a nuclear power station, using conventional means (such as a large proximate explosion or the direct impact of an aircraft)...

In 1981 a US study estimated that such an attack carried out with an explosive-laden aircraft could cause 130,000 deaths.

Perhaps most ominously, the study points out that, in the eyes of a terrorist group such as al Qaeda, the risk of destruction is not a limiting factor - though it may be a factor in the response of their target:

But the difficulty arises, of course, when traditional terrorism gives way to so-called ‘expressive terrorism’, and when the object of nuclear weapon use would be not to negotiate but simply to destroy. For terrorist individuals and groups driven by some religious, millennial or apocalyptic vision, the massive and hugely symbolic impact of a unilateral, ‘spectacular’ nuclear strike could be precisely their goal. Furthermore, the destruction of themselves and everything associated with them in the retaliatory attack which followed their nuclear attack might be a prospect to be accepted, if not welcomed. What, then, would be the point of launching a nuclear counterattack against such perpetrators, other than to provide for them the martyrdom they seek?

Quite apart from the massive human cost of such an attack, the rationale for a punitive nuclear response falls away when account is taken of the likely size and scale of the organization carrying out the attack; would a group of a few hundred people dispersed across a wide area, and perhaps even among several countries, really be a suitable target for a retaliatory nuclear strike? If not, and if the decision is taken instead to pursue the terrorists with conventional military means, then the terrorists will have gained whatever benefit they envisage from a nuclear attack, without a substantial change in their circumstances, since they would have expected to be pursued by conventional military forces in any case.

The prospect now begins to loom of a nuclear weapon state being self-deterred when contemplating the wisdom of a nuclear response to a limited nuclear attack. ... Surprisingly perhaps, the ‘post-modern’ terrorist begins to assume a good deal of initiative in this scenario; the rewards of nuclear use might be perceived as maximal, with the attendant risks minimal (or, at least, unchanged).

While this threat may be improbable, the risk is so great that it cannot be ignored:

[I]t might be improbable that a terrorist organization could either design and manufacture, or acquire a nuclear weapon, and then deliver it, but even the slightest possibility that this could happen would entail massively disproportionate consequences. In other words, the risk of terrorist use of nuclear weapons, as traditionally calculated, could scarcely be higher. For Western governments the risk is of such a magnitude that worst-case analysis seems not only unavoidable but also appropriate.

CRS Report on Maritime Security

In January, the Congressional Research Service released a report on the threat of maritime terrorism.

While noting that "fewer than 1% of all global terrorist attacks since 1997 have involved maritime targets," the report discusses a few of the particular threats. It's an exercise in threat recognition.

The CRS notes that there are particular challenges to launching a maritime attack:

One U.S. naval analyst has identified a number of specific challenges for terrorists in the maritime environment:

• Maritime targets are relatively more scarce than land targets;
• Surveillance at sea offers less cover and concealment than surveillance on land;
• Tides, currents, wind, sea state, visibility, and proximity to land must all be factored into a maritime terror operation;
• Maritime terror operations may require skills that are not quickly or easily acquired such as special training in navigation, coastal piloting, and ship handling;
• Testing weapons and practicing attack techniques, hallmarks of Al Qaeda’s typically meticulous preparation, are harder and more difficult to conceal at sea than on land;
• The generally singular nature of maritime targets, the low probability of damage and casualties secondary to the intended target, and the problems associated with filming attacks at sea for terrorist publicity may also reduce the desirability of maritime targets.

Despite these difficulties, al Qaeda and other terrorists have chosen maritime targets in the past, including the USS Cole bombing in 2000, the attack on the French oil tanker Limburg in 2002, and the 2004 attack on the Philippine Superferry 14.

A maritime attack does not need to cause many human casualties to have an effect:

If economic loss is the primary objective, terrorists may seek to carry out different types of attacks, with potentially few human casualties but significant impacts to critical infrastructure or commerce. The Limburg bombing may have been an attack of this type, threatening to disrupt the global oil trade and causing considerable consternation among tanker operators. Although the bombing killed only one member of the Limburg’s crew, it caused insurance rates among Yemeni shippers to rise 300% and reduced Yemeni port shipping volumes by 50% in the month after the attack.

The report comments on the relative risks of different types of maritime attacks, starting with the nuclear "bomb in a box" (i.e., shipping container) scenario:

Expert estimates of the probability of terrorists obtaining a nuclear device have ranged from 50% to less than 1%. Among other challenges to obtaining such a device, experts believe it unlikely that countries with nuclear weapons or materials would knowingly supply them to a terrorist group. It also may be technically difficult to successfully detonate such a nuclear device. North Korea experienced technical failures in conducting its 2006 nuclear weapons test, and this test took place under highly controlled conditions. Attempting to detonate a nuclear device in a maritime terror attack could pose even greater operational challenges.

The risk of a "dirty bomb" attack may be higher, especially if the primary objective is economic damage, though there are skeptics:

Terrorist attacks on U.S. ports with radiological dispersion devices (“dirty” bombs) is also considered among the gravest maritime terrorism scenarios. A 2003 simulation of a series of such attacks concluded that they “could cripple global trade and have a devastating impact on the nation’s economy.” Many terrorism analysts view such a dirty bomb attack as relatively likely.

Scientists have long questioned whether terrorists could actually build a dirty bomb with catastrophic potential since handling the necessary radioactive materials could cause severe burns and would likely expose the builders to lethal doses of radiation. Building and transporting such a bomb safely and to avoid detection would likely require so much shielding that it would be “nearly impossible” to move. Weaker dirty bombs made from less radioactive (and more common) materials would be easier to build and deploy, but would have a much smaller physical impact and would likely cause few human casualties.

Attacking a tanker or port facility that handles liquified natural gas (LNG) could create a major explosion, though it's not easy:

To date, no LNG tanker or land-based LNG facility in the world has been attacked by terrorists. However, similar natural gas and oil assets have been favored terror targets internationally. The attack on the Limburg, although an oil tanker, is often cited as an indication of LNG tanker vulnerability.

Former Director of Central Intelligence, James Woolsey, has stated his belief that a terrorist attack on an LNG tanker in U.S. waters would be unlikely because its potential impacts would not be great enough compared to other potential targets. LNG terminal operators which have conducted proprietary assessments of potential terrorist attacks against LNG tankers, have expressed similar views.

If terrorists are looking for human casualties, a ferry is a possible target:

A RAND study in 2006 argued that attacks on passenger ferries in the United States might be highly attractive to terrorists because such attacks are easy to execute, may kill many people, would likely draw significant media attention and could demonstrate a terrorist group’s salience and vibrancy. One U.S. Coast Guard risk analyst reportedly has stated that “in terms of the probability of something happening, the likelihood of it succeeding and the consequences of it occurring, ferries come out at the very high end.” Such attacks have occurred overseas. As noted earlier in this report, terrorists linked to Al Qaeda attacked and sank the Philippine vessel Superferry 14 in 2004.

After examining the details, the report comes to this rather bland conclusion:

It appears, therefore, that while maritime terrorist attacks against the United States may be more difficult to execute and, consequently, less likely to occur than other types of attacks, they remain a significant possibility and warrant continued policy attention.

NYC's New Decontamination Central

According to an article in the New York Sun, NYC's Downtown Hospital just opened a large, advanced decontamination station, capable of treating 500-1000 patients per hour (compared to 20 patients per hour in the hospital's old decon unit):

Because water is the single greatest antidote to contamination, according to Dr. Najer, the hospital installed 25 high-power showerheads that jut down from the roof of the semi-outdoor enclosure.

The shower water is warmed by a 1,000-gallon tank that is separate from the hospital's water supply, ensuring a constant supply of heated water. Gas-powered heaters are scattered along the roof of the facility.

The unit also has several outlets that can pump "medical air" into the self-contained suits that physicians wear while treating contaminated patients.

"It's arguably the most technologically advanced decontamination unit in the world," Dr. Antonio Najer said.

This is good preparedness, at a relatively inexpensive cost of about $1 million. And it's not just NYC that could use one of these things. Any community that's near a chemical plant, a port, a nuclear power facility, etc., could benefit from a large decon station like this. In any major situation, you've got to get people cleaned up quickly. And, in a nod to hospital administrators, you can find other uses for it as well:

The unit has other functions as well, according to the hospital's assistant vice president of public affairs and marketing, Vanessa Warner. In the case of plane crash, it could be used to clean hazardous jet fuels off of victims, and it could double as a car wash for ambulances.

Most Likely WMD Scenario?

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) recently issued a report indicating that the most likely WMD terrorist threat involves a radioactive dispersal device, or "dirty bomb," the Globe and Mail reported.

The CSIS even goes so far as to say that it's surprising that no one has yet used this mode of attack:

Canada's spy agency says it is “quite surprising” that terrorists have not detonated a crude radioactive bomb, given the availability of materials and ease with which they could be made into a weapon.

But the CSIS study cautions that “a determined and resourceful terrorist group” could execute more elaborate forms of nuclear or radiological attack.

“The technical capability required to construct and use a simple RDD is practically trivial, compared to that of a nuclear explosive device or even most chemical or biological weapons,” the CSIS study says.

A homemade radiological weapon could consist of a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material commonly found at universities, medical and research laboratories or industrial sites.

The intelligence service points to the notion terrorist thinking has shifted from the desire to inflict mass casualties to “one of inflicting severe economic damage.”

It's not news that an RDD is a more likely mode of attack than a nuclear weapon. It's important to note, though, that the CSIS is seeing terrorists as pursuing economic aims rather than bodycounts. This has long been a key element of al Qaeda's strategy, as Brian Michael Jenkins pointed out in his excellent book, Unconquerable Nation:

Lest anyone misunderstand the purpose of jihad and consider it a form of spiritual calisthenics, bin Laden is explicit: “It is a religious-economic war,” he says. ... He argues that the United States can be brought down by destroying its economy.

Al Qaeda, in its view, brought down the Soviet Union by draining its economy through the Afghan war. It seeks to do the same thing to the United States.

Response Structure for Nuclear Incidents

Catching up a bit here. This one is a couple of months old. The American Nuclear Society published a brief article in September that described the response for a nuclear incident. Not surprisingly, the response would be a complicated process involving many agencies.

Nuclear weapon incidents or accidents will involve a joint Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Defense (DoD) response. Local responders and state agencies, who always have the primary responsibility for the protection of the public, will also be involved.

If the emergency involves a nuclear weapon, either the DOE or the DoD is the lead agency (whichever organization had custody of the weapon at the time of the incident/accident). If an RDD is the issue, the FBI becomes the lead agency representing the Department of Justice. An accident at a nuclear power plant will put the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the lead role.

The military response, alone, involves a number of elements:

A military response will involve the DoD and may include the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which coordinates DoD responders to a nuclear/radiological incident.

The National Guard Civil Support Teams (CSTs) are available through the states to assess the seriousness of radiological accidents, to predict the consequences, and to assist the Incident Commander in the management of the consequences.

A global radiological/nuclear field response is provided by the Air Force Radiation Assessment Team (AFRAT). … Its mission is to deliver radiological risk assessment to assist in the recovery of the affected area.

Worldwide medical assistance is provided by the U.S. Army through its Radiological Advisory Medical Team (RAMT).

The Medical Radiobiology Advisory Team (MRAT) … provides radiological and medical expertise to military commanders and medical providers.

The federal civilian response is similarly complicated:

The primary civilian government agencies responding to radiological incidents include the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semiautonomous agency within the DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Agriculture, and others.

One of the best-known civilian response organizations is the Radiological Assistance Program (RAP), which is administered by the NNSA. … The main mission of RAP is to provide information or deployable assets (DOE measurement equipment and personnel) in order to assess and mitigate a radiological incident.

If radiological materials become airborne, two NNSA response assets can be brought into operation: the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) … and the NNSA’s Aerial Measuring System (AMS).

Another NNSA radiological response asset is the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site (REAC/TS), which provides medical information, medical personnel, and patient care in the event of a radiological accident.

Responses to incidents involving nuclear weapons under DoD or DOE custody can involve the DOE’s Accident Response Group (ARG), whose expertise includes weapons designers, radiation health professionals, and nuclear scientists, so that knowledge of all weapons in the U.S. stockpile is at hand.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will respond to terrorist and emergency incidents at the nuclear, industrial, and medical facilities it licenses.

Besides those involved in direct response, other agencies are involved in coordination:

Coordination among federal and state agencies during the emergency phase of a nuclear/radiological incident may be handled by the NNSA’s Consequence Management Planning Team. This is an advance component of the Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center (FRMAC), [whose mission] is to coordinate federal and state/local radiological monitoring and assessment activities.

The article suggests that state and local first responders can improve their response capacity by developing relationships with federal and state responding agencies, as California did with the FRMAC:

To at least improve the coordination of response between FRMAC and the states, including local governments, a close working relationship must be developed between the two entities. The state of California has been cited as a good model for developing this working relationship. Building this federal/state bridge initially involved federal/state coordination in nuclear power plant emergency response drills. This allowed the state to study FRMAC procedures, and FRMAC team members became informed about California’s response procedures. … Other states are attempting to achieve a similarly firm handshake with FRMAC. It must be noted, however, that the California/FRMAC relationship took years to develop.

Even though the likelihood of a nuclear or radiological disaster is relatively low, compared to other threats, its consequences could be extremely serious. Even in the event of a "dirty bomb" attack that killed or injured relatively few people, the panic caused by a radioactive release could significantly complicate the response. The right time to learn about the responding agencies and how the response might be organized is now, rather than after the fact.

Communication, Communication, Communication

Disaster communication is in the news.

The CDC has released an online guide for disaster communications in the early hours after a major incident involving biological or chemical agents, radiation, or suicide bombings:

The guide provides message templates for local leaders to communicate with the public:

The messages were written to be used by federal public health officials and to be adapted for the use of state and local public health officials during a terrorist attack or suspected attack. Use these messages as follows:

• To communicate with the public during a terrorist attack or a suspected attack
• To adapt for a specific event (These messages were written for fictitious situations, so assumptions were made about an event.)
• To provide information during the first hours of an event
• To save precious moments during the initial response time and to buy the time necessary for public health leaders to develop more specific messages

My only complaint about the guide is that it isn't organized in a very user-friendly fashion. You have to click around a bit to find what you're looking for.

In other news, Government Technology reported on Washington D.C. mayor Anthony Williams' efforts to increase subscriptions for the city's text-message alert system, which would send them information and updates in the event of an emergency. (San Francisco recently created a similar system.)

In order to make the process easier, individuals can now sign up by simply texting 32362 (D-C-E-M-A) from any cellular device.

"This new rapid enrollment feature means people who want to register for the system don't need access to the Internet or e-mail to sign up for alerts," said Williams. "Signing up for emergency alerts is as easy as using a cell phone -- and it can really pay off when there is any kind of emergency in your neighborhood."

DC Text Alert allows citizens to receive emergency messages about an event on any text-capable device -- cell phone, computer -mail, pagers, and PDAs. ... Currently, 23,000 individuals have registered for the system, which was inaugurated in June 2004.

On another subject, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) released its biennial report (available for purchase only) . In a press release, NEMA summarized some of the survey's main findings:

Unfortunately, these growing [state] responsibilities that are mandated by the federal government are not supported by adequate funding.

There are positive findings as well. An overwhelming majority of states – 46 – are making use of established standards to assess capabilities and address shortfalls in their state emergency management programs. ... Standards would result in a more comprehensive emergency management program at the local level, which would mean greater capability when a disaster occurs.

The Biennial Report shows that the mutual aid system in the U.S. continues to strengthen. The Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), a national mutual aid agreement that allows support across state lines when a disaster occurs, played a key role in the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita response. By spring 2006, the compact had deployed nearly 66,000 people from 48 states, at a cost of more than $830 million.

Thirty-five states now have established similar structures within their own borders. These intrastate agreements allow jurisdictions to help one another while having provisions in place to address reimbursement, liability and workers compensation issues. Thirty-six states also have a regional mutual aid mechanism in place. This bodes well for faster, stronger and more efficient disaster response and recovery.

Government Computer News reported that the full NEMA survey estimated that the full cost of statewide systems for communication interoperability will be about $7 billion:

The National Governor's Association also tackled the issue of interoperability, in its recent issue brief: "Strategies for States to Achieve Public Safety Wireless Interoperability." The short report is worth reading, if only for the best practices that it found among the states for promoting interoperable communications (an example of the federal system at work). But generally, the NGA found that there is a lot of important work to do:

The lack of interoperable communications continues to be a serious, pressing public safety problem that severely undermines the ability of first responders to operate effectively during an mergency situation.

Five key issues underlie the current status of interoperability among public safety agencies in this country:

• incompatible and aging communications equipment;
• limited and fragmented funding;
• limited and fragmented planning;
• a lack of coordination and cooperation; and
• inadequate and fragmented radio spectrum.

But here's one good thing: The NGA emphasizes that local agencies should be closely involved in any state effort to promote interoperability:

Providing local representation on the governance body and in interoperability planning is a critical. The state governance board that oversees the development of public safety wireless communications should include local public safety agency requirements for emergency communications. Local officials should be included in planning and decision making early.

Generally, anything that improves communication, either among first responders or between first responders and the public, can only be a good thing. Communication problems were significant in the aftermath of Katrina and 9/11. It's a problem that has lingered too long.

CSIS Survey on Bioterrorism

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently released the results of a survey that addressed the threat of bioterrorism. In October and November 2006, CSIS polled 52 senior U.S. government officials and legislators, former senior officials, and nongovernmental experts, asking them to evaluate the threat of bioterrorism, the effectiveness of U.S. bioweapons nonproliferation efforts, and proposed policy options for reducing the threat.

For the most part, the survey reinforces some commonly held observations about the bioterror threat.

The survey found that risk of a mass-casualty bioterrorism incident is currently considered to be relatively low, but growing. Although terrorists are increasingly inclined toward mass-casualty incidents, two major obstacles stand in the way: 1) The difficulty of obtaining and weaponizing biological agents that are capable of creating mass casualties; and 2) The difficulty of disseminating them so that large numbers of people are affected.

A more likely scenario is that of a "lone wolf" or a smaller-scale terrorist incident:

Those survey viewed occasional small-scale attacks designed to make the public lose confidence in the ability of government to handle such events as the most likely scenario.

The most catastrophic attacks were seen as the least likely:

Ranking dead last [in likelihood] among the scenarios presented was the development of novel biological agents that are more lethal, more transmissible, and/or able to defeat existing medical treatments.

Still, the threat is seen as substantial and growing:

A combined fifty-two percent of the survey participants saw the biological weapons threat as greater than or equal to the threat of nuclear weapons ... When measured against chemical weapons, the survey results were quite pronounced, with seventy-four percent seeing biological weapons as the greater threat.

At some point, perhaps taking advantage of advanced technologies, terrorists may be able to overcome routinely the technical obstacles to a mass casualty biological attack. At that juncture, the number of injuries and deaths from bioterrorist attacks, which are negligible in comparison to the huge casualties accumulating from suicide bombings, could skyrocket.

Over half of the survey participants, fifty-eight percent, were of the opinion that the biological weapons threat is increasing somewhat, while twenty-five percent of those polled said that the threat was increasing significantly.

The survey participants shifted toward a higher likelihood of a major biological attack for the ten-year timeframe, with one respondent forecasting that a mass casualty bioweapons was certain to occur. The bulk of opinion, fifty-four percent, was that a major attack was somewhat likely [within the next 10 years]. Twenty-seven percent of those surveyed viewed an attack as very likely. A nongovernmental expert thought that it “may take years before there is a successful attack, but that one successful attack will likely lead to several.”

For local first responders, the risk of bioterrorism is worth spending some time and effort on, especially in light of RAND's recent findings that coordination could be improved between first responders and public health officials on the state and local levels (also see my blog entry from yesterday). Questions include:

• What collaborative efforts can be made?
• What information can be shared?
• What joint preparations and/or training can be completed?

It is also important to note that most preparatory activities for a bioterrorism attack would also be applicable in the case of a naturally occurring pandemic.

$1.2 Billion - But Will It Work?

Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report that was critical of DHS' Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), who recently awarded a $1.2 billion dollar contract to a number of contractors for new portal monitors, known as “advanced spectroscopic portal monitors” (ASP), that can detect both the presence and the type of nuclear or radiological material.

DNDO tested ASPs in 2005. They set a goal of identifying highly enriched uranium (HEU) – the main ingredient in a "gun" type nuclear weapon – 95 percent of the time. But the ASP prototypes identified bare HEU only 70 to 88 percent of time. And when the HEU was masked with benign radiological materials, the success rates fell to 53 percent, 45 percent, and 17 percent for the three ASP systems tested.

GAO said:

Despite these results, DNDO did not use the information from these tests in its cost-benefit analysis. Instead, DNDO officials told us that since new portal monitors cannot meet the 95 percent level of performance, they relied on the assumption that they will reach that level of performance sometime in the future.

Moreover, DNDO’s cost-benefit analysis only considered the benefits of ASPs’ ability to detect and identify HEU and did not consider ASPs ability to detect and identify other nuclear and radiological materials.

In other words, DNDO did not consider the ASP portals' effectiveness in identifying radiological materials that would be useful in a dirty bomb, such as Cesium 137 and Cobalt 60.

GAO concludes:

DNDO’s cost-benefit analysis does not justify its recent decision to spend $1.2 billion to purchase and deploy ASP technology.

The lesson of this, as I see it, is that you have to take into account the entire spectrum of risk and reward before deciding on any particular intervention.