I have written a number of posts about nuclear weapons for this blog. The focus was on high-tech atomic and hydrogen bombs that require great expertise and expensive equipment. There is another type of radioactive bomb that I have not dealt with. This is called a “dirty bomb” and consists of radioactive material and a conventional explosive. The idea is to spread radioactive material over an area in order to terrorize the inhabitants and force evacuation and abandonment of the contaminated land. If such a bomb were set off in a city, at the very least, it would cost billions to clean up if that were even possible. And, in the long run, cancers and other illnesses might result affecting the health of thousands.
The first step in constructing a dirty bomb is to obtain radioactive materials. In general, the more radioactive a material is, the more difficult it would be to get it. Plutonium would be ideal because it is so radioactive but it is also very well guarded. U-235 would be second choice. There is a lot more of it around in the form of fuel pellets intended for nuclear reactor fuel but the security is high at uranium processing plants. Uranium ore and mine tailings are radioactive but much less so than U-235 and plutonium. They would be much easier to get but it would require a lot more to make an effective dirty bomb. Then there are various types of radioisotopes that are used in industry such californium used in neutron analyzers, used in consumer products such as the americium in smoke detectors and used in medicine such isotopes as Co-60 used in sterilizers. It would be possible to obtain sufficient radioisotopes for a dirty bomb either from the manufacturing facility or from the devices themselves.
Then you need a good conventional explosive. There are a lot of places that explosives are used in industry. Dynamite and TNT are used in mining among other things and could be easily purchased or stolen. There are tons of plastique explosive such as SEMTEX that are unaccounted for and available on the black market. Grenades, mortar shells, land mines, etc. are also available on the black market. And finally, there are a number of recipes floating around for brewing up your own explosives from readily available commercial products such as fertilizer.
When an explosive device has been obtained or assembled, the next step is to create a “jacket” of the radioactive material surrounding the explosive core. Add a detonator which can be purchased, stolen or built and you have a dirty bomb. The detonator could utilize either a timer or a remote detonation system over a radio link or a cell phone. Once the bomb is placed in an area where it can do maximum damage such as some open area near a dense population center, financial district or industrial zone, it can be detonated from a safe distance.
Everything I have written in this post is widely available in print or online for anyone who wants to know about dirty bombs. I wrote this post not to encourage anyone to build and detonate such a bomb nor to provide any critical information for anyone wishing to construct one. I wrote this post to show how simple and easy it would be for any hostile party to create such a bomb if they had the dedication, the motivation and relatively few resources. It is something of miracle with all the hostile groups, hatred and radioactive materials in the world that no one has built and detonated such a device yet. However, I feel that it is only a matter of time.
