[FairOpinion]

Very interesting.

It sounds true, or he wouldn't have contacted the intel services.

[FairOpinion]

Related (?) article:


New leads point to election (terror) attack
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1254768/posts

[Strategerist]

The disappearance of the materials from the Volgodoskaya nuclear power station, near the city of Rostov-on-Don, heightened fears that weapons-grade material, including caesium, strontium and low-enriched uranium. had been obtained by Chechen terrorists.

WTF? Neither caesium or strontium in any quantity or purity is "weapons-grade" for anything, and low-enriched uranium isn't "weapons-grade."

It's simply astonishing how incompetent the media is covering this subject.

[A. Pole]

The exiled Russian oligarch, who according to The Sunday Times Rich List is the 14th richest man in Britain, said that he had contacted British and American intelligence after being approached by a Chechen at his home in Surrey.

I wonder, why a Chechen would approach this "oligarch" (great thief)?

[GSlob]

Given the intensity of Chechen/Russian hatred, to believe that the Chechens would try to sell the device instead of USING it - strains human credulity and defies reason.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Southack]

"Dubov said that Zakhar had claimed that the portable bomb was one of several made by Soviet scientists during the early 1990s. “One of them disappeared during the mess of the early 1990s,” Dubov wrote in a report. “The person who holds this suitcase with a bomb wants to sell it and he (Zakhar) is empowered to act for him."

The smaller the nuke, the shorter the shelf life.

The less shielding that you have, the sooner that your electronics and conventional explosives deteriorate from the radiation.

The less fissionable material that you have, the faster you generally need your atomic trigger isotopes to emit neutrons. The faster you emit neutrons, the shorter your half-life. The shorter your half-life, the less time that you have before the nuke simply fizzles instead of booms.

This is simple physics. Moreover, heavy metals like uranium and plutonium are among the most brittle materials known to man, and the slightest bit of humidity turns them into uranium oxide or plutonium oxide (i.e. worthless rust).

So a "suitcase nuke" from the 1990's is likely little more than a rusted, shattered, fragmented collection of wiring and explosives today.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Ping

[Fedora]

Quite interesting, though given the source I'd like to see some independent corroboration:

Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: the Life and Times of Boris Berezovsky

[Future Useless Eater]

>>a nuclear bomb concealed in a suitcase


I will never believe ANY of these stories about a suitcase
nuclear bomb. There is absolutely no reason it has to be
'suitcase sized'. The whole purpose of declaring it suitcase
size is for maximum terror by those writing the drivel.

A volkswagen-sized nuke would work just as well. Anything
that can be packed into a cessna could be easily
maneuvered to within a half-mile of a high-valued target.
Two private planes got within a half-mile of President Bush just today.

Any early-1990 suitcase nukes would need electronics to
set them off, but those would be essentially a puddle of
glass after that many years of exposure to radiation.

So the instant I hear 'suitcase nuke' I know the story is
just for its scare-factor only.

[DCBurgess58]

This doesn't pass the smell test at all!

If the Chechen terrorists had a bomb they would most likely have used it and claimed that they had more of them to achive leverage with Russia. This story sounds like B.S. designed to put a positive light on the business man telling it.

[AdmSmith]

I guess that this was staged by the Russian administration to snare Berezovsky. He and Putin are not the best of friends.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/10/20/berezovskyinterview.shtml

The journalist does not know what he is writing: "heightened fears that weapons-grade material, including caesium, strontium and low-enriched uranium" None of the latter are weapons-grade materials.