Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

160Disasters Waiting to Happenbe considered. Although there are other high-leverage targets for such bombs,nuclear facilities are the only targets that can amplify the radiological damage ofthe bomb by a thousand to hundreds of thousands of times, contaminating anarea the size of Europe or the United States. This could be done by a singlebomb, made by “a small non-national group” with the appropriate technicalcapabilities” 138 (which are not unduly hard to get), 139 and transportable in thetrunk of a car. The amount of bomb material needed would be about the size ofa lemon or a grapefruit, depending on its composition and the sophistication ofthe design. Rule-of-thumb designs with generous safety margins could be usedinstead of elaborate calculations. Even the most difficult materials-handling operationsneeded for fancy designs are no harder or more risky than convertingmorphine base to heroin–a clandestine operations which criminals have doneroutinely for years. 140 And if terrorists claim in a fashion which is technically crediblethat they possess bomb materials, or a bomb, they must be taken at theirword, since it is statistically impossible to verify the presence or absence of morethan twenty tons of bomb materials in the U.S. alone. 141 Inventories are similarlyfuzzy abroad, and bombs or materials to make them can be smuggled acrossnational borders as easily as the tens of thousands of tons of marijuana that issmuggled undetected into the U.S. each year. 142If terrorists had actually made nuclear bombs, that fact would probably behighly classified. It is known, however, that in the seven years ending inNovember 1977, forty-nine threats were received in the United States “inwhich adversaries claimed to possess nuclear material or a nuclear [explosiveor dispersion] device and threatened to wreak severe damage with it.” 143 Bymid-1981 the count was sixty-five and rising. 144 Special procedures, threatevaluation teams, and telephone hotlines have been set up nationally and insome states (notably California) to deal with such threats. At least four threatswere deemed sufficiently credible to evoke intensive searches by a speciallyinstrumented team 145 –the type of response that raises the most serious civil libertiesissues. 146 So far as is publicly known, all threats so far have been treatedas bluffs and have actually been bluffs. 147The nuclear industry commonly argues that terrorists would not bother tomake nuclear bombs because it is easier to steal them from the military. 148 TheUnited States Government owns more than thirty thousand nuclear bombsand plans to build over twenty thousand more during the 1980s. The bombsare stored at up to two hundred sites in more than forty states. 149 The twentytwothousand tactical bombs include some seven thousand stored in Europe,many small enough to tuck under an arm. Some reportedly weight less thatfifty pounds. Some bombs have been lost, 150 dropped accidentally, or firedaccidentally in missiles. 151 Acknowledged nuclear bomb accidents (Broken