Preliminary Analysis of Terrorist Threats Combining Radionuclides and Explosives

The basis for drawing conclusions about the nature of future terrorist threats is the analysis of incidents recorded so far. The paper, based on the analysis of literature reports on terrorist incidents involving CBRNE materials, shows that the available databases do not provide certainty that the data contained in them describe the phenomena analysed representatively. The validity of such an assessment was confirmed by the indication of differences between the number of data published in publicly available global databases and the corresponding numbers given in articles concerning selected geographical areas or types of incidents. The possibility of releasing nuclear or radiological material into the environment as a result of the stimulation of an explosive charge was analyzed. The paper indicates two possibilities of using an explosive charge for this purpose. The first possibility is to disperse the radioactive material in the environment by means of an explosive method. The second option is to attack an object containing radioactive material with explosives and release this material into the environment. The paper indicates that the degree of terrorist threat strongly depends on the type of object. Civilian facilities, particularly nuclear power plants, are particularly vulnerable, but military storage facilities are not free of threats, albeit to a lesser extent. It seems certain that terrorists will carry out a spectacular attack with the use of explosives and resulting in contamination with radiological and nuclear materials, but there are still barriers, above all social ones, which prevent them from doing so.