Loose nukes

Overall, there have been 14 confirmed, significant cases of trafficking in fissile material from the former Soviet Union, according to the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

The good news is that most of the cases date to the early and mid-'90s, before Russia stabilized and a US effort to help guard its material took off.

The bad news is that there may be more significant cases the world doesn't know about. Most of the confirmed incidents took place in Europe or what used to be the western USSR. Yet a glance at a map shows that southern Russia, and the former republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc., are the logical places for a Middle Eastern group such as Al Qaeda to go nuke-shopping.

The US has been involved in cooperative programs with Russia to control its loose nuclear weapons and material for years. Since 1991, US money has paid for the deactivation of more than 5,000 Russian nuclear warheads. It has provided security equipment for dozens of facilities, helped construct a secure storage facility for fissile material, and paid for science and technology centers intended to provide ex-weapons scientists the means to work on civilian research.

"These programs have made tremendous progress," notes Jon Wolfsthal, an associate in the non-proliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

But much more may need to be done. Almost half of Russia's fissile material is stored in facilities that have not received US-funded protection upgrades. Russia continues to add to its stockpile of plutonium - not for military purposes, but because the reactors that produce the material also produce desperately needed electricity.

Earlier this year, a Department of Energy advisory group headed by former US Sen. Howard Baker and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler surveyed the US effort - and found it wanting. The programs need a broader mandate, and they need more money, concluded the group.

"The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen or sold to terrorists or hostile nation-states," concluded the Baker/Cutler study.

That was written before Sept. 11.

There is one point about Al Qaeda's nuclear program on which most experts agree: It does not yet have an actual atomic weapon. If it did, the chances are it would have exploded by now.

It's less certain whether the group has any radioactive material at all. Al Qaeda has been a player in fissile-material markets for years, according to intelligence reports.

In the early '90s, it allegedly scoured Kazakhstan for USSR-era material, in the belief that the high percentage of Muslims in this former Soviet republic might open doors. Apparently, the group came up empty.

Since then, Al Qaeda may have been snared by its share of scams. They were dealing, after all, in a back alley of world commerce that makes drug-dealing look both honest and inexpensive.

At least once, Al Qaeda operatives have been offered low-grade uranium reactor fuel unsuitable for weapons use without further enrichment. Along with other potential buyers, Al Qaeda also may have fallen for the widespread "red mercury" fraud. Clever criminals pitch this element as a crucial component of the Soviet weapons program.

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