Report Urges Tighter Nuclear Controls

[demdave]

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. wondered aloud one day in 2002 whether someone could build an atomic weapon from parts available on the open market. His audience, the leaders of the government's nuclear laboratories, said it could be done.

Then do it, the Delaware Democrat, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, instructed the scientists in a confidential session. A few months later, they returned to the soundproof Senate meeting room with a workable nuclear weapon, missing only the fissile material.

"It was bigger than a breadbox and smaller than a dump truck, but they were able to get it in," Biden said in a recent speech. The scientists "explained how -- literally off the shelf, without doing anything illegal -- they actually constructed this device."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50362-2004May23?language=printer

[Don_G]

1. Why Not

Tom Clancy did it on paper once and I don't think he was far off from replicating the feat in his garage.