Global Security Newswire

Concerted international steps are needed to secure atomic energy sites from terrorist assaults that could result in a massive release of radiation, a prominent nuclear expert said this week (see GSN, March 24).

Harvard University's Matthew Bunn wrote in a web post that "Both al-Qaeda and Chechen terrorist groups have repeatedly considered sabotaging nuclear reactors -- and Fukushima provided a compelling example of the scale of terror such an attack might cause," Reuters reported.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to lose power to key cooling systems, resulting in three reactors going into meltdown. The ensuing radiation release was on a level not seen since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and led authorities to evacuate 80,000 residents around the plant (see GSN, June 23).

"Some nations have "extraordinarily weak security measures in place," Bunn wrote, without singling out any particular country.

"The nuclear industry in many countries is much less prepared to cope with security incidents than with accidents," he said.

Measures to prevent diversion of nuclear weapons and their components or the malicious disablement of atomic plant systems are "particularly urgent," Bunn wrote.

"The chance that the next big radioactive release will happen because someone wanted to make it happen may well be bigger than the chance that it will happen purely by accident," he stated (Fredrik Dahl, Reuters, June 23).