Preview

nuclear terrorism

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1746 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
nuclear terrorism
NUCLEAR TERRORISM

INTRODUCTION
Nuclear terrorism denotes the detonation of a yield-producing nuclear bomb containing fissile material by terrorists.[1] Some definitions of nuclear terrorism include the sabotage of a nuclear facility and/or the detonation of a radiological device, colloquially termed a dirty bomb, but consensus is lacking. In legal terms, nuclear terrorism is an offense committed if a person unlawfully and intentionally “uses in any way radioactive material … with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury; or with the intent to cause substantial damage to property or to the environment; or with the intent to compel a natural or legal person, an international organization or a State to do or refrain from doing an act”, according to the 2005 United Nations International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.

HISTORY
As early as December 1945, politicians worried about the possibility of smuggling nuclear weapons into the United States, though this was still in the context of a battle between the superpowers of the Cold War. Congressmen quizzed the "father of the atomic bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer, about the possibility of detecting a smuggled atomic bomb:
Sen. Millikin: We... have mine-detecting devices, which are rather effective... I was wondering if anything of that kind might be available to use as a defense against that particular type of use of atomic bombs.
Dr. Oppenheimer: If you hired me to walk through the cellars of Washington to see whether there were atomic bombs, I think my most important tool would be a screwdriver to open the crates and look. I think that just walking by, swinging a little gadget would not give me the information.
This sparked further work on the question of smuggled atomic devices during the 1950s.
Discussions of non-state nuclear terrorism among experts go back at least to the 1970s. In 1975 The Economist warned that "You can make a bomb with a few pounds of plutonium.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Fear spread through the scientific community and the public that the Nazis were creating a super weapon; a bomb never before seen on earth that had unprecedented power and destruction. This caused a stir in the scientific community and caused many scientist to study uranium. Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, both escaping Nazi oppression, fled to the United States to warn the government of the powers of the atomic bomb. In June 1939 Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls at the University of Birmingham had made a breakthrough investigating the critical mass of uranium-235. They conclude that to reach critical mass and explode the uranium core must be at least 22 pounds, small enough to be carried by a bomber of that era. President Roosevelt, Vannevar Bush, and Vice President Henry A. Wallaceon attended a meeting on October 9th 1941, and the President okay’d the atomic…

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    U.S World History 05.06

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Despite the fall of the Soviet Union 19 years ago in 1991, the issue of nuclear arms, besides terrorism, remains one of the chief security concerns in the contemporary world. Accordingly, the following issues concerning nuclear arms remained unresolved security concerns.Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These events not only brought about the surrender of the Japan and an end to World War II, but they also helped shaped the nature of international politics for the next six decades.The atomic bomb is the crudest form of a series of powerful nuclear weapons to be eventually developed and come into existence. Both superpowers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, eventually built massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. This escalation of nuclear arms possession led to…

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The race to develop the atomic bomb had begun around the 1940's. World War II was still taking place, and its creation would change the game of war forever. Whoever could create it first would have the power to threaten to destroy entire regions and roll over their enemies. The information that was found during research was vital, and worth so much. Spies at the time were playing a very dangerous game because of the seriousness of the information they were giving away. A few were arrested and put in jail for years, one of them being Klaus Fuchs, a Russian spy who was arguably the most damaging during the development of the Atomic Bomb in Britain and the United States.…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Technology In The 50's

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Because of the wartime production boom of the 1940s, many scientific achievements and milestones were reached. Such advancements gave Americans a new range of convenient devices as well as new worries. During World War II, the U.S. monopolized nuclear weapons until 1949 when the U.S.S.R. developed their own devastating atomic weapons. As Nobel Prize- winning chemist Harold C. Urey put it, “There is only one thing worse than one nation having the atomic bomb; That’s two nations having it (Kagan 78).” However, to compete with Russia in the field of nuclear weapons, the U.S. created and detonated…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Millions killed in nuclear disaster, thousands left homeless, countries left in peril! These are some of the many consequences that are faced in a nuclear dependent world. Day after day people live in fear that one tiny mistake, one wrong word can cripple our world and leave the survivors living in rubble. The world has discovered that despite the enormous precautions taken, disasters and destruction still constantly resurface themselves through our short, but eventful nuclear history. During World War II, Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Dwight Eisenhower that has shaped mankind from that moment on. It described a weapon that would release enough energy to destroy an entire city("USA weapons of mass destruction." ). Now nearly four score ago the consequences we face for this technology has been detrimental to our society. Scientific discoveries also yielded the idea of using this extraordinary power as an energy source and a extraordinary threat.Due to these undeniable risks, the world needs to remove all sources of nuclear weaponry and power.…

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    McLaughlin, John J. “The Bomb Was Not Necessary.” History News Network (2010). Database. Web. 25 April 2014.…

    • 1704 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Those who are considered outliers in today’s society are those who challenged what they knew to grow, and eventually leave their mark on the world. The father of the atomic bomb and head of the Manhattan Project was no exception. Robert Oppenheimer challenged his upbringing and the society around him to become his own person. He supported the first use of the atomic bomb on an actual target, despite the possible moral concerns with that, as well as opposing the development of the hydrogen bomb. Lastly, Oppenheimer had relations with multiple members of the Communist Party, despite the high tensions during the Cold War, which was going on at the time. However, the first case of controversy Oppenheimer was involved with occurred during the Manhattan Project, when it was being decided whether the first use of the atomic bomb should be used on a real target, or as a demonstration.…

    • 791 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Manhattan Project

    • 1812 Words
    • 8 Pages

    On the morning of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay flew over the industrial city of Hiroshima, Japan and dropped the first atomic bomb ever. The city went up in flames caused by the immense power equal to about 20,000 tons of TNT. The project was a success. They were an unprecedented assemblage of civilian, and military scientific brain power-brilliant, intense, and young, the people that helped develop the bomb. Unknowingly they came to an isolated mountain setting, known as Los Alamos, New Mexico, to design and build the bomb that would end World War 2, but begin serious controversies concerning its sheer power and destruction. I became interested in this topic because of my interest in science and history. It seemed an appropriate topic because I am presently studying World War 2 in my Social Studies Class. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were always taught to me with some opinion, and I always wanted to know the bomb itself and the unbiased effects that it had. This I-search was a great opportunity for me to actually fulfill my interest. <br><br>The Manhattan Project was the code name for the US effort during World War II to produce the atomic bomb. It was appropriately named for the Manhattan Engineer District of the US Army Corps of Engineers, because much of the early research was done in New York City (Badash 238). Sparked by refugee physicists in the United States, the program was slowly organized after nuclear fission was discovered by German scientists in 1938, and many US scientists expressed the fear that Hitler would attempt to build a fission bomb. Frustrated with the idea that Germany might produce an atomic bomb first, Leo Szilard and other scientists asked Albert Einstein, a famous scientist during that time, to use his influence and write a letter to president FDR, pleading for support to further research the power of nuclear fission (Badash 237). His letters were a success, and President Roosevelt established the Manhattan…

    • 1812 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    During World War II, a scientific discovery was made that would alter the course of history. German scientists learned a new method in which the splitting of a uranium atom became achievable. This would ultimately lead to the possibility of a foreign power utilizing that energy to produce a weapon with the capacity of causing irreplaceable damage. In 1939, Albert Einstein, having come across this information, wrote to the United States President Franklin Roosevelt to warn him of the German’s findings. Two years later, in 1941, the United States had officially begun their own research to build an atomic bomb. This effort, under its code name, came to be known as the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project negatively…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My purpose in writing this essay was to show that while “A letter to the President of the United States” was written by someone who was very knowledgeable and signed or approved by many other scientists was not successful. This essay goes to show that sometimes no matter how much valid evidence is presented to an individual regarding why they should not make a decision, they disregard that and make the decision anyway. I hope that the readers are able to understand that the scientists were truly worried about what long term effects the use of the atomic bomb would have on the United States.…

    • 1055 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Facts and recommendations.” This quote conveys that he is an authoritative person that is relevant to the scene of science and politics at the time. In the text it states, “This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable--though much less certain--that extremely powerful bombs of this type may thus be constructed.” His point of view on uranium in this case is that the government could create very powerful bombs from it, which could…

    • 169 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    [ 4 ]. Loeber, Charles R, “Einstein Opens the Door,” Building the Bombs: A History of the Nuclear Weapons Complex (Albuquerque: Sandia National Laboratories, 2005), p. 1-18.…

    • 2239 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Albert Einstein Speech

    • 613 Words
    • 3 Pages

    On November 11th 1947 the renowned scientist, Albert Einstein, presented his case against nuclear warfare and the real dangers that come with it. He was able to grab his audience’s attention by great use of literary devices and rhetoric techniques. The argument delivered in this speech proved to be effective because till this day a nuclear bomb has yet to be dropped.…

    • 613 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Multiple meetings were held and numerous copies of General L. R. Groves memorandum, which detailed the event, were sent to important figures in the discussion of the atomic bomb. The decision to drop the bomb was not a hasty one- planning began before May of 1945. Seventy accredited individuals in the field of atomic study were educated enough about the prospect of the event that they could send a petition to President Truman supporting the use of the bomb. Due to the planning the adjudged the potential damage of the bomb, the power of this new weapon was understood before its use against Japan. Truman’s statement that “it was the most terrible thing ever discovered” is proof of that.…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    A handful of nations went to work developing the theory and soon it became a race to see who could build the bomb first. England, Germany and the United States all began projects to develop weapons of mass destruction. In 1939, Albert Einstein was afraid that Nazi Germany would create the Atom Bomb. Albert sent a letter to President Franklin D Roosevelt, stating that Germany was at work with Atom Bombs. He also stated in the letter that is was okay with the Americans to use his Theory of Relativity to be used in the making of the atom bomb. Part of the letter states "In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America-that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears this could be achieved in the immediate future". (Fromm. Par. 36). “The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is the Belgian Congo (Einstein Para 5). This is implying Einstein is allowing America to use his theory of…

    • 1817 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays