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The "Nuclear Suitcase"
- The "nuclear suitcase" is actually a miniaturised, remote-controlled atomic bomb with an explosive charge equal to one kiloton - or one thousand tons of TNT. They were designed by the KGB to be prepositioned near NATO bases to be activated in what many Russian officials saw as the inevitable nuclear war. "The situation is very serious now. Evidence is from conversations with Boris YeltsinŐs former science advisor Vladimir Dzorkin, and many conversations with top officials in the CIA, MI5 and Mossad. The nuclear suitcases certainly exist."
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To detect a suitcase bomb you have to get very close," said senior scientist Thomas B. Cochran at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. "If the radioactive source is plutonium, a neutron detector can see it up to a few tens of meters away." Gamma detectors, which sense the radiation signature of cobalt-60 and cesium-137 need fairly sophisticated instrumentation to sort out the energy spectra of the radiation; that spectrum determines whether the source is plutonium or uranium-235, or some innocuous background source, Dr. Cochran said. These work from a few meters away -- with one obvious caveat: "If it's shielded, you'll never see it."
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