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Nuclear Terrorism in Britain: Risks and Realities

CDR 27, April 2003

In December 2002, Oxford Research Group held a public seminar in Oxford to examine the risks and realities of nuclear terrorism in Britain.

During the seminar, an audience including government officials, counter-terrorism practitioners, emergency planning officers and senior journalists, heard presentations on the risks of nuclear terrorism in the UK from eight leading experts on nuclear security and terrorism. Six of these presentations were published in May 2003 as a Current Decisions Report, the 27th in our series.

Nuclear terrorism in its most horrific form would obviously be the explosion of a stolen nuclear weapon in a densely populated area. Such an attack is not, however, the most likely form of nuclear terrorism. Terrorists could use other forms of nuclear terrorism including:

• Exploding a 'dirty bomb' in an urban area.
• An assault on a civilian nuclear power plant.
• An assault on radiological materials during transit.
• The detonation of a crude nuclear device.

Each method could cause massive economic, social and psychological damage, and could cause the death of many thousands of people. In order to evaluate the risk of nuclear terrorism, we must look at three factors:

1. The feasibility of nuclear terrorism.
2. Current measures governments are taking to prevent nuclear terrorism.
3. The psychology of mass destruction and disruption terrorism.

The papers in this Current Decisions Report address these crucial issues.