Regarding Dale Amon’s problem of uranium smuggling, he’s right, if the US can’t keep “wetbacks” out, and the UK can’t stop IRA terrorists from crossing from the Irish Republic, what chance for any country with a long, contested land border?
However, does anyone know anything EASIER to track remotely than radioactive isotopes?
If I were a terrorist I would order a truckload of ammonia and another of iodine, and a suitcase of coffee filters. A pistol to detonate the dynamite paste is probably the hardest item to locate in the UK (steal one from a police officer is probably the safest and most inconspicuous method).
In guerrilla warfare the optimum weapon is one that doesn’t break down, and is cheap. This is why the British Army’s SA80 rifle is a good weapon: no one has ever stolen one for terrorist use (because they are expensive and break if you look at them sideways 
). Until someone makes a mass-produced, miniature nuke which is less prone to malfunctions than Microsoft software, I’m not going to worry overmuch about the threat of nuclear terrorist attack.
Just a thought for the paranoia squad: how do you know there haven’t been a dozen dud nukes set off around the world last week in underground car parks? The triggers were just dodgy…
This is my favourite explanation for the non-appearance of Bin Laden: he’s waiting for the b***** things to go off 
I’m sorry Antione, but if you’ve got the U235 and you have expendalble people to machine it and you don’t care if it is only a few percent efficient… it’s pretty dead easy to do a gun type fission bomb. Nothing very fancy. Just a mechanism to bring the upper bit in clean contact with the lower bit with enough pressure to hold it there until the cascade gets going.
As to detection… yes there are ways to detect it but they may not be quite as good as you would wish. And if you are a religious fruitcake, there is just nothing that says GOD’s ANGER like a mushroom cloud over thine enemies city.
It’s the thought that counts.
I doubt it. Maybe it’s pretty easy for nuclear and ballistics engineers to do that, but I doubt Al Quaida has many of those working for them (more of the former than the latter, anyway). Hussein does apparently have a complete set of plans, which, as computer simulations at Los Alamos showed, would work.
However, enriched uranium and plutonium are rather difficult to get. If Hussein manages it, that still probably won’t cause him to use the device, even on Israel. Doing that would be suicidal. If he wants to see his country destroyed by Israeli or U.S. nukes, then he might want to try it. I doubt he wants this.
Otherwise, he would probably stick to the more common usage–deterrence.
When speaking in terms of preventing nuclear attacks, “probably” does not suffice as the level of confidence required to be satisfied that one’s assumptions are sound. “Overwhelmingly probable” is the level to be sought, and very little about Hussein’s behavior meets this mark, as evidenced by massive miscalculations that he has made in the past. If Hussein were to believe that he could avoid detection as the source of a nuclear attack, by using cut-outs as the delivery device, there are several credible scenarios in which he might take such a risk. Once the source of a nuclear attack is not readily identifiable, deterrence begins to fail catastrophically.
Oh get a grip, Antoine. It does not actually have to go off (as in properly go critical) to make an horrific mess. Even if it just goes ‘bang’ with 1% effectiveness of a properly contained nuclear bomb, it will spread lethal radioactive muck around and could make a major city centre a nasty place to live for quite some time while it was cleaned up.