A DISTURBING ARTICLE on nuclear proliferation, from Technology Review. And here’s a scenario that we’ve heard elsewhere, too:

Unlike weapons-grade plutonium, (which is typically contaminated with Pu-240, a spontaneous neutron emitter), U-235 is difficult to detect without active probing, as with a thermal neutron source). It emits alpha particles and some energetic gamma rays, but these can be shielded with lead. This makes HEU relatively easy to smuggle. The easiest way to get a bomb into the US is probably in a shipping container. We wouldn’t detect it unless we were tipped off about where to look.

Let’s imagine a bad case. Saddam sets off a bomb in Washington D.C. Unlike the designers of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, he derives great pleasure from mass death. Unlike bin Laden, he takes credit immediately for his terrorism. He announces that he has additional weapons, and that if the U.S. retaliates, he will start setting them off in major U.S. cities.

The only response to such a threat, of course, would be the nuclear obliteration of Iraq — and I mean obliteration, using scores, or even hundreds of nuclear weapons. Because, even in the face of such a threat, you don’t want anyone else to think they can get away with this. As for the countries downwind, well, that will give other countries’ neighbors an incentive to ensure that no one threatens the United States. Lots of people will die, and the only consolation is that, maybe, it will prevent worse in the future.

A grim scenario? Yes. Which is why Saddam can’t be allowed to get that far. It’s nice to see that Congress understood that.