![]() ![]() The same year, then-US President Barack Obama hosted world leaders at a Nuclear Security Summit focused on preventing assailants from using radioactive material to “outdo” the 9/11 attacks. Giragosian had also said at the time of writing that the arrests of three suspects in Georgia for attempting to sell radioactive material should remind the world that it cannot remain complacent to dirty bombs. ![]() But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, “most of these facilities have been only minimally protected, with meagre security precautions or safeguards”, he said. Soviet-era facilities in the Caucasus had once had “ample supplies of caesium, strontium and other related radiological materials”. Giragosian said that while there had been significant efforts in Russia and Ukraine to dispose of radioactive materials left over from the former Soviet Union, safely disposing of such material in the Caucasus had been “a lower priority”. Richard Giragosian, founding director of the Regional Studies Centre, an independent think-tank in Yerevan, Armenia, said in a 2016 op-ed for Al Jazeera that following the Septemattacks on the United States by al-Qaeda, fears multiplied in the West of the dangers posed by radiological “dirty” bombs. “A dirty bomb is really easy to make,” said Scott Roecker, vice president for the nuclear materials security programme at The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-profit organisation based in Washington. ![]() The material used in a dirty bomb could be obtained from radioactive sources used in medicine and industry or from research facilities. The amount of radioactive material dispersed, while dangerous, is not necessarily lethal. They are much easier and cheaper to build than a nuclear device and also far less dangerous.ĭirty bombs use conventional explosives, such as dynamite, placed alongside radioactive material, which is then flung outward by the force of the blast. Technically known as radiological dispersal devices, dirty bombs are relatively primitive, imprecise weapons. Here’s a look at what experts mean by the term “dirty bomb”: How does a dirty bomb work? Investigators also found nuclear material capable of being used in a dirty bomb in an abandoned factory in Chechnya. Western countries have dismissed Moscow’s claim as “transparently false”.Īlthough no successful dirty bomb attack has ever been recorded, two failed attempts to detonate such a device were reported in the southern Russian province of Chechnya more than 20 years ago. The Kremlin alleges that Ukraine is preparing to detonate a dirty bomb in order to blame it on Russia and force an escalation of the war that has entered its ninth month. The primary objective of a dirty bomb is to sow fear, panic and confusion by hurling radioactive dust and smoke into the atmosphere. ![]()
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