With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was a flood of weapons on the world stage. Russia began research and development in the 1960’s to miniaturize their nuclear weapons. With the Soviet Union dissolving a lot of these “suitcase” nukes were unaccounted for. Per Quora.com, “The possibly missing suitcase nukes were particularly troubling. They were small (30 - 50 kilograms), easily portable, had a yield of half a kiloton to 2 kilotons and lacked the safeguards to prevent accidental or unauthorized detonation that other Russian nuclear weapons had. Who controlled the weapons was also troubling: they were variously described as being controlled by Soviet Special Forces or the KGB. (Warinner , 2012)” The article later mentions that, “Loose Russian nukes are not really the big worry of governments now; nuclear materials like plutonium, enriched uranium and other radioactive materials are more worrying. (Warinner, 2012).” This is concerning in relation to North Korea. It is not a secret that North Korea and the former Soviet Union have had a relationship and that the Soviet Union has been supportive of the efforts of North Korean leadership…the big question is how supportive have they been and how much/if any nuclear material/assets have been provided to North Korea.
North Korea was always rattling their saber to demonstrate their power, but with their lack of resources, and know how, it’s hard to say how viable the threat is from them. Terrorist on the other hand are a wild card. As mentioned earlier, there are concerns with a terrorist organization getting ahold of nuclear material, but I feel that it would be used in an RDD rather than a full up, viable nuclear weapon. The footprint that this process would create would be extremely difficult to conceal and carry out. In our reading in discusses the “small” (one to four kilograms (FAS n.d)) amount of radioactive material necessary to manufacture a nuclear weapon, but this is still fissile material, and not something that can be kept concealed very easily.
In conclusion, seeing the difficulties that North Korea has faced in developing their nuclear weapons program, I feel that a viable nuclear weapon isn’t as attractive to a terrorist organization as an RDD would be.
References:
Warinner, A. (Sep 2012) How many nuclear weapons were unaccounted for after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Retrieved from: https://www.quora.com/How-many-nuclear-weapons-were-unaccounted-for-after-the-collapse-of-the-Soviet-Union
FAS (n.d.) Nuclear Weapon Design. Retrieved from: http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/design.htm
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