Countdown To Zero

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I dont believe it.

It makes no sense.

"There is something so strange."

"Perhaps you could suggest some

fantastic explanation. "

"Could'nt it be this sort of thing"

He turned the drawing round.

"Yes," she said,

"That is what I mean."

This was the first explanation

of the splitting the atom.

Robert Oppenheimer said:

"Impossible."

But within 15 minutes he decided

it was real.

He realised it would release

some great amount of energy,

That you could

generate power

and make bombs.

Within one week, on

Oppenheimer's black board

There was a drawing of

the bomb.

Enrico Fermi stood

in his office

and looked out of Manhattan.

He kept his hand to

the size of a tennis balll.

"A little bomb like that" He said

"And it would all disappear."

Countdown To Zero

There is no doubt in my mind

if the terrorists had

acquired a nuclear weapon,

They would not have hasitated to use it.

SoI guess the question is:

Could They Ever Get One?

Al-Qaida is determined

to acquire nuclear weapons

and use them if they get them.

In the early 90's

they tried to buy highly

enriched uranium in Sudan

They got scammed

Just prior to the

we do know that Osama bin Laden and

his lieutinent Zawahiri

sat down with two

Pakistani nuclear scientists

and discussed

nuclear weapons.

Before releasing sarin gas

in the Tokyo subway

the Japanese cult

Aum Shinrikyo

attempted to acquire a

nuclear bomb in Russia.

They bought a sheet

farm in Australia

to mine uranium to

build their own bomb.

The objective of Al-Qaeda is:

is to kill 4 million Americans

including two million children

This is in his calculations,

the..which is required to

balance the scales of justice.

He takes

various incidents

from Shatila to

the war in Iraq,

and counts up the

bodycount and says

"Thats how many people

we owe:
4 million. "

You are not going to get

hijacking airplanes and

crashing them into buildings.

Actually, I am not that worried

about nuclear weapons.

Its not one of my main worries.

Isnt everyone worried about

nuclear weapons?

There are all concerned

nuclear war?

Thats a stupid answer,

no

I don't know. Its never been something

that I actually had to think

in my everyday life.

It might get on your conscience

and maybe then disappears

I do not think anybody is going

to use in this day and age

it is ridiculous to even think about it.

What can you do?

Nothing.

At the end of the day a small button

and there is going to be a big mess at the end of that

Somebody is going to make a mistake one day

and we are all going to suffer for it.

There are three ways to

acquire a nuclear weapon:

You could steal a bomb,

You could buy a bomb

and you could build a bomb.

Of all the things I've learned after 9/11,

about terrorism iintent

the most startling discovery

for me personally

was realising they were trying to

build a bomb.

The hardest part of

making a nuclear bomb

is getting the material,

highly enriched uranium

or plutonium.

Many countries have

these materials,

and often they are poorly guarded

But if I were

a terrorist

intending to build

a nuclear bomb,

and i wanted to blow up

a major city

I would look to the countries of

the former Soviet Union.

There have been many cases

involving the theft

of highly enriched

uranium or plutonium.

And every time there has been a black market ceasure

of stolen HEU or plutonium

andthey were able to

track to its source

It came from Russia.

There was a case at a Russian naval base

in the early 1990s.

One of the naval personel told a relative of his

where the highly enriched uranium at this place was

This relative walked through a gapping hole

and a security fence

walked upto what you and i would

consider to be a tool shaft

snapped the lock

with an iron bar.

He set off no alarm.

It was not detected at all.

The Russian military prosecutor in that

case said, quote:

"Potatoes were guarded better ".

At a facility called Luch,

where they fabricate fuel made from

highly enriched uranium,

there was a worker there who knew

that as long as the output

was within about 3 percent of the input

they figured it was normal loses to waste

and they didnt bother to investigate.

So he kept stealing

small amounts

of highly enriched uranium

day after day,

over a long period of time.

Eventually he stole a kilogram and a half

of 90% of highly enriched uranium

He set off no alarms.

Noone noticed.

He had friends

who were making their living

stealing car batteries.

And they said:

"Maybe the guy in Moscow who buys or is still in car batteries

"will Buy your

stolen uranium . "

So they went down to

the train station together,

and the police came in and arrested the car battery thieves

and he got arrested along with them

Thats the only way he was ever caught .

We have cases in which people

from the Russian nuclear arsenal

were sellling material

and they were captured

We have cases in which people from

Russian nuclear labs

were selling materials

they was captured.

Almost all of those cases

until the material was seized

and had never been noticed

to have been missing.

All the black market seizures that

I am ware of were serendepetous

They were caught by luck.

So we dont know weather it is

the iceberg or the tip of the iceberg.

Once you have managed to acquire

highly enriched uranium,

you need to smuggle it out of the country

Georgia is located

along Russia's southern border

and things like highly enriched uranium

could be smuggled from such a place

by Azerbaijan,

Iraq, Iran,

Turkmenistan, Afghanistan

and so on so forth.

The Georgians invented a so called man

of Turkish nationality

who said he was a Muslim and

representing a

serious organization.

Oleg Khintsagov

believed he was selling

highly enriched uranium

to make an atomic weapon to terrorists

If a truck driver

can get hold of it,

a small time husler

who just wants to become a rich guy

imagine what

professionals could have done

Real professionals

with an ideology,

with an agenda

with brains

Once you have moved the

highly enriched uranium,

you could use

any number of ports

in the Middle East

or the Mediterranean

to ship the

HEU to your destination.

smuggling highly enriched Uranium

into the United States,

is pretty straight forward

lead pipe will

shield the HEU.

The detector would have be

within a few inches

to pick up any radiation.

And then hide it amongst

everyday goods

A hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium

is smaller than a football.

It would fit in a 6 pack beer cans

go to the united states everyday

Every way the drugs come to new york city

would be the same way you would imagine

highly enriched uranium coming.

If you have any doubt about

the ability of al-Qaeda

to bring highly enriched uranium

into the U.S.

They could always hide it

a bale of marijuana.

Terrorism is just one threat

the deliberate threat.

There is also the

unintentional threat

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