Plan foiled: terrorsits strike at nuclear target in Belgium

AMSTERDAM - According the Dutch justice department a group of muslim-extremists arrested in Rotterdam plotted an attack on a nuclear target, just across the Belgian border with the Netherlands. It looks that they were not able to plan much of the operation, but for the justice department this information could be of great importance in the case against this group.

A French and an Algerian man that were arrested two days after September 11 in Rotterdam, and an Algerian ex-roommate that was later arrested in Canada, planned an attack on the NATO-base 'Kleine Brogel' in Flamish Limburg. At that base, somewhat to the south of Valkenswaard, are rumored to be ten American nuclear weapons.

Already in October an officer of the French department of justice announced that intelligence services had evidence that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on a nuclear target in the US or Europe. The airspace above American nuclear powerplants was closed for a while and France placed anti-aircraft weapons near it's nuclear plants. Experts agree that al-Qaeda is trying to somehow top the destruction of the World Trade Center.

That the 'Kleine Brogel' was a target, so close to the Netherlands, is frightening. But it's not said that the Netherlands escaped a disaster. The suspects belong, according to the AIVD (Dutch security service), to the radical islamic movement Takfir wal Hidjra, important within the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. In these circles, planning attacks is a daily occupation. This does not lead to action every time. There is a lot of fantacizing.

An attack on 'Kleine Brogel' was also very difficult. The nuclear weapons are well secured. But an attack on a nuclear target would have caused a lot of panic, and therefor could be effective even without destroying the base.

The question is what the role of the suspects arrested in Rotterdam was. Until now it looked like they only were involved in passports and credit-card forgery. And they also 'knew' a lot of people. Jerôme C. once lived together with Zaccarias Moussaoui, the 'twentiest hijacker', that is being held in the US. There were phone-calls with Nizar T., an Tunisian man from Brussels that wanted to bomb the American embassy in Paris. From them the information about the attack on the NATO-base orginates.

Until now it looked like the justice department in Rotterdam only arrested a supporting cell, low in the al-Qaeda hierarchy. Monday, when Jerôme C., Abdelkader R. and Adel T. reappear in court, the DA-office will make clear what their role in the planned 'Kleine Brogel'-attack was.

I was referring to the hysterical folks here in the USA who are insisting that the names of all our suspects in custody MUST be named. Following 9/11 many 'person's of interest' were taken into custody. Their names have not been released and there has been a hue and cry from those who no doubt think they are supporting the constitution, who insist the names be released.

IMHO it would be much better for their cohorts to wonder and worry but not KNOW if they are going to be next on the agenda for being taken into custody.

We've talked a lot on FR about the improbability of significant contamination resulting from an attack on a power plant that has a shield and containment structure like those used in the West for LWR systems. Unless the reactor doesn't have that, you're not going to do much except destroy your airplane. The only ones I know of that don't have containment are the old RBMK (Chornobil) design the Soviets used to build, which aren't built in the West, or anywhere these days.

A nuclear weapons storage dump would also be a poor target. Aside from the fact that its a small target, even if weapons were stored there they would be done so in "safe" mode. They aren't normally placed in combat mode until a short time before they are intended to be used. Only if they are placed in combat configuration is there a chance they can be cooked off by a conventional blast and fire, and even that is unlikely, since you need to actuate the detonation pulse exactly as you would have if you were deliberately setting it off. Just burning up the implosive charge won't cause a nuclear explosion. That would be similar to a "safe" detonation, wherein you destroy the weapon (deliberately) without it making a big boom (sometimes called single-point safe, because you start the implosion charge detonation from a single position, rather than multiple points, and that just blows up the core, rather than imploding it).

There have been instances of those occurring during the atmospheric testing program in the 1950s and early 1960s. The launch complex at Johnston Island had some plutonium contamination from a couple of launch failures during the high-altitude detonation testing program. The launch vehicle carrying the warhead either failed or went off course, and the safety officer destroyed the warhead and rocket (rather than having an intact nuke come down and possibly lie around somewhere unrecovered). Some of the fragmented plutonium core fell back down on the island. It was no big deal, they cleaned it up (unshielded plutonium particles are easy to find with and alpha-sensitive survey meter) and kept on with the tests.

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