Countdown to Zero

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 9/11 attacks

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 4 million people killed by

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

100 000 shipping containers 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

of a nuclear detonation

by accident,by error or by misjudgment.

We like to think that the U.S. military

or other military who are controlling nuclear weapons

are perfect organizations , they will never fail .

We expect them to have 100% reliability.

But even the well-disciplined,

very professional U.S military

made serious serious mistakes with nuclear weapons.

An atomic bomb breaks loose from a mounting shakle

in a B-47 jet over Florence, South Carolina,

causing a sensational freak accident.

A B-52 bomber was loaded with nuclear weapons by mistake

An American airplane flew 1500 miles across the nation we are told,

with six nuclear warheads on aboard.

And nobody knew. not the aircraft crew,

not the commanders on ground.

we have had B-52's explode in the air

during refueling mission

causing 4 thermonuclear weapons

to fall onto the Spain territory and into the Mediterranean.

A B-52 bomber carrying nuclear weapons

crashed near U.S Air Force space in Greenland,

scattering deadly plutonium over the icecap.

In 1960, a BOMARC air defence missile exploded,

melting a nuclear warhead.

In 1968, the USS Scorpion sank

400 miles southwest of Azores.

Nuclear weapons on board were never found.

A B-47 bomber disappeared over the Mediterranean.

Nuclear weapons on board were never located.

In 1959, an aircraft crashed near Whidbey Island, Washington.

The nuclear debt charges

were not recovered.

Skyhawk's strike aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon

rolled off an aircraft carrier in the Sea of Japan

The weapon was never recovered.

There are many ways in which efforts