The
Economist: Between 1992 and 2007, according to Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory physicist
Ian
Hutcheon, 17kg of highly enriched uranium was seized from
smugglers around the world, along with 400 grams of
plutonium.In neither case is that enough for a proper atom
bomb, but it is still worrying
says
the
Economist
.Presumably, more is out there. Even if
it is not, the material that has been found could have been
used to make a "radiological" weapon, by blowing it up and
scattering it around a city using conventional
explosives.Hutcheon is one of those charged with analyzing this
captured material, to discover how dangerous it really is and
where it came from.
