> On Tue, 6 May 2003, Sam Smith's Progressive Review was quoted as saying
>
>> JAY SHAFT, COALITION FOR FREE THOUGHT IN MEDIA - In three separate
>> interviews a U.S. Special Operations Command Colonel admitted that the
>> U.S. and Great Britain fired 500 tons of DU munitions into Iraq.
>
> How does depleted uranium rate as a material for making dirty bombs out
> of?
As I understand it, that depends. U238 isn't radioactive enough to cause lethal radiation. The warheads, which are pretty dense, can be safely handled without protective suits. It is, however, pretty nasty toxic stuff if in a form that can be ingested, so you wouldn't want to drink water contaminated with DU residue, which is what people allege happens. You could oxidise it or react it with a strong acid to make a fine powder, for instance, which would be more effective at harming people than little lumps of metal, and would be much easier to spread. Whether this would be seriously bad is hard to tell; the sort of effect we are talking about is increasing the rate of cancers or maybe acutely poisoning some people. It would take a while to clean up the area affected, so there could be a significant economic dimension. Radiological weapons rely on fear, so maybe you could just mill the warheads and sprinkle them in a bomb to have the desired effect. Any geiger counts near a terrorist attack site would surely freak people out.
Thought the al Qaeda people are definitely into symbolism and terror proper, they are also very much into actually annihilating people; on that basis, I would say the prospects of them using something as like a radiological bomb is lower than of them using more ordinary, cheap and effective forms of mass killing. Dusting NY and waiting ten years for the cancer rate to go up a smidgeon just doesn't seem like their style.
Thiago