Militants trained in Afghanistan may have already acquired a “dirty bomb” owing to an increase in international black market trade in radioactive material.
In January, the U.K.’s national terrorism threat level was raised from ’substantial‘ to ’severe,’ after a failed terrorist plot to blow up an airplane heading for Detroit.
However, in three separate reports all released on Tuesday, the U.K. government outlined the possibility that a future terrorist attack on London could involve weapons of mass destruction.
An update to the government’s National Security Strategy says that “the U.K. does face nuclear threats now,” due to “the possibility that nuclear weapons or nuclear material could fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorist groups.”
Officials are concerned about the amount of radioactive material that has simply gone missing. Between 1993 and 2008 there have been 1,562 incidents where nuclear material was lost or stolen, according to the International Atomic Energy Authority.
A staggering 65 percent of the losses were never recovered.
According to the annual report by the U.K.’s Office for Security and Counter Terrorism, the possibility of a dirty bomb terrorist attack on the U.K. is now greater because of a “significant increase” in the illicit trade of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons and material.
Moreover, much of the material could be purchased over the Internet, the report said, adding that this was made more likely with the increase of CBRN material being used for legitimate purposes.
The third report, on Britain’s strategy for countering chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear terrorism, said that al-Qaeda was actively trying to obtain CBRN. Al-Qaeda is the “first transnational organization to support the use of CBRN weapons against civilian targets and to try to acquire them,” says the report.
U.K. stockpiles of decommissioned materials were also identified in the report as a potential vulnerability due to poor security. It called current security measures “variable and sometimes inadequate, leaving materials vulnerable to theft by insiders and criminal and terrorist organizations.”
Al-Qaeda is suspected of conducting research into dirty bombs in Afghanistan while the country was under the control of the Taliban.
The reports came as U.K. security minister Lord West warned that a terrorist attack could be launched from a speedboat sailing the length of the Thames to detonate such a device in the heart of the capital.
In a bid to counter gaps in maritime security, Lord West announced the establishment of the National Maritime Information Center.
“Things like the attack on Mumbai and the forthcoming Olympics in 2012 made us realize we needed to look at the maritime domain more closely,” he told reporters.
He added that efforts to track vessels around the British coastline had in the past been “pretty ropey.”
“I think the public would be surprised to discover that we do not know about every single contact [with a vessel],” he told reporters.
