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the opinion of nuclear experts make this overshadowing it all: the end of the Cold
scenario highly probable. Authorities War removed the looming threat of
have stopped at least seven cases of mutual destruction, yet has ushered in a
nuclear components from being new and equally frightening one through
smuggled into the West from Russia. No nuclear terrorism. The end of more than
one knows how many more have passed four decades of armed confrontation, of
through undetected. the ceaseless production of ever more
advanced weapons that went unused, has
After the end of the Cold War and over now left the former Soviet Union in utter
half a century since the dropping of the shambles. The dangers of proliferation
first atomic bomb over Japan, the world are threefold. Firstly, basic weapons --
is entering a new, potentially more tanks, planes, ships of all kind,
dangerous era. The immediate threat of submarines, missiles, rocket launchers,
mutual nuclear annihilation may now be artillery, whole bases by the many
behind us, but before us is a brave new thousands -- produced by the best and
world whose troubling nuclear most brilliant scientists are now viewed
dimensions are only now beginning to be as surplus. Secondly are the vast
realized. quantities of nuclear weapons, the
reactors that produce the plutonium that
The material is weapons-usable goes with them, and the large quantities
plutonium, created in civilian reactors of the raw plutonium itself, that are kept
that generate electricity for cities rather in storage. And finally, the presence of
than in military reactors that produce thousands of nuclear scientists and
material for bombs. The problem is that technicians who designed, built and
although the intended use of these two serviced these materials and equipment.
types of reactors is different, the All are now either unusable or
byproduct is the same -- plutonium -- an superfluous in the former Soviet Union.
essential ingredient of nuclear weapons.
Civilian power reactors are typically “Paradoxically, the collapse of the
much larger than their counterpart Soviet empire, which appears to
military production reactors -- and remove the threat of great-power
therefore produce many times more nuclear war, is driven by the same
plutonium. The year 2000 will mark the causes that are now making the use
point in human history when more of nuclear weapons by small
atomic bomb materials begin circulating nations and terrorists more likely”
in civilian commerce than exists in -- James Dale Davidson
nuclear weapons.
The first shock to the Western world
“Even a handful of terrorists with occurred in July, 1994, when German
biological weapons could cause authorities expressed concern over their
horrifying casualties in big cities” -- first discovery in the black market of
James Dale Davidson. weapons-grade plutonium from Russia.
The substance, a powder in a red
A Harvard study released in March, mercury solution that turned out to be
1996 warns of "nuclear anarchy" in the plutonium 239, the material in the heart
immediate future. The irony of the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in
